


A Nuke to Your Chest

by vorkosigan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, And his righteous stick too, Angry Steve, Angry Steve Rogers, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Finding Mutual Undesrstanding, Fix-It, For now it's all angst, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Hurt, M/M, Makeups Are Hard, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Slash, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve needs to pull his head out of his ass, Talking it over, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony is not weak, Tony needs to pull his head out of his ass, but later, i think, lots of anger, reparations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-13 14:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7979779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorkosigan/pseuds/vorkosigan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>---“Suit,” Tony said, striding towards the main door of his mansion. It came out more garbled than he’d intended. Still, the parts of his suit came flying; his exoskeleton stabilized him somewhat. </p><p>He hit the button and opened the door. Then he raised his fists and lay into Steve Rogers, who was standing on his doorstep with a slightly tired look in his eyes.---</p><p>After Siberia, Tony held it together, but after that awful letter he started drinking. Heavily. And now he's having blackouts. Obviously, he doesn't remember calling Rogers on that cursed phone. And what you can't remember, well, it didn't happen. Obviously. </p><p>And Steve Rogers has had enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That Cursed Phone

“Suit,” Tony said, striding towards the main door of his mansion. It came out more garbled than he’d intended. Still, the parts of his suit came flying; his exoskeleton stabilized him somewhat.

 

He hit the button and opened the door. Then he raised his fists and lay into Steve Rogers, who was standing on his doorstep with a slightly tired look in his eyes.

 

Or, better put, he tried to lay into him. His reflexes were never quite on par with those of Captain America, even at the best of times, and especially not today. And even his armor wasn’t properly repaired after... well, after Siberia. He didn’t even have the helmet. He never quite got to that.

 

In two seconds flat, he was lying on his back, Rogers’ knee of his chest, pressing him down, not that Tony would have been quite capable of shaking him off anyway. Images flickered in front of Tony’s eyes, of another fight, not so long ago. Anger came back, like a bile in the back of his throat. Or maybe it _was_ bile, he figured. Or just a lousy metaphor.

 

“What the fuck are you doing here, Rogers?” he said though his teeth, looking up, into the eyes of this man whom he wanted to strangle with his bare hands. Or tried to say. It came more like a slur. He registered anger and hurt – and surprise? – in Rogers’ eyes. Well, what the hell did he expect, just coming here like this, especially after that awful letter?

 

“What the actual...?” Rogers began, then checked himself. No. “What the...?” He closed his mouth before he could finish.

 

“Miss Manners always, eh,” Tony spat. He wasn’t even struggling to get up. All the strength born from adrenaline and anger had left him, and now he just lay there. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them up again, stared at the gray skies beyond Rogers’ head. The man was in his civvies, of course. A faded T-shirt. Probably loaned off someone. The man never gave a thought to his clothes, he just wore what was there.

 

Last time Tony had seen him, he was in his costume, staring down at him with more desperation and less disgust than now, deciding not to slam his shield into Tony’s face, after all. _And what am I supposed to be now, grateful?_ , Tony thought to himself acerbically. He was coming to his senses, the haze in his head slowly clearing. He _could_ remember coming down to open the door, he _could_ remember the surge of anger when he saw Rogers on the monitor and ordered his armor on the run. But anything before that – blackness. Blackness for god knows how long.

 

He was sick to his stomach. He sighed.

 

“Why are you here, Rogers?” he asked again. He meant to put a poisonous edge to his voice, but again, it was just vague and the words were slurred.

 

“Because,” Steve said, his expressionless eyes staring at Tony’s face, his nose wrinkling with disgust, “you called me over.”

******

 

 

It had been 9 p.m. in Wakanda when the phone suddenly rang. Which meant about 11 a.m. in the U. S. Steve jumped away from the table and ran to pick up, breathless fear mixing with anger to make an emotional cocktail Steve Rogers would rather have avoided. Of _course_ the man would call now of all times... Why would ‘now’ be worse than any other time Steve had no idea, but somehow it was. A part of him had waited for this call, gritting his teeth and dreading. A part of him couldn’t stand the feeling in the pit of his stomach, the one that intensified with every minute or hour or day that passed as the phone stayed dark and dead.

 

He stopped for a moment to gather his thoughts, steady his hand. The darn thing just kept ringing and ringing. Stupid technology; the thing was too small for any adult’s hand, let alone his. He barely managed to hit the answer button with his thumb.

 

"Steve, are you there?“

                           

The words were barely recognizable. Stupid reception

 

He realized he wasn’t saying anything. His voice couldn’t get past a barrier in his throat for some reason.

 

"Steve? Oh, to hell with all this...“

 

"Tony, wait!“

 

Tony waited – apparently. At least he didn’t hang up. Was it bad reception, though? Or something else?

 

"Tony, are you ok?“ the Captain asked, somewhat tentatively, when the silence had grown too heavy to bear.

 

A pause.

 

"No.“ Just like that, simple and bitter and honest.

 

Fear was like a knife slash somewhere in the vicinity of Steve’s chest.

 

"Are you hurt?“, he asked hurriedly, urgently, switching into his business hero mode. "Where are you?“

 

Tony’s laugh was short and bitter – and, Steve was suddenly sure – whiskey induced. It sounded like a short bark, a ‘huh!’. "Nothing so dramatic. I’m at home. As for your other question... well, what do you _think_?“

 

“You’re drunk”, Steve cut him off, not too warmly.

 

“From now on...“, Tony was going on, pronouncing words indistinctly, although his mood was obvious enough, ”...we shall call you... Captain Obvious.”

 

Anger surged in Steve, right back to the surface, drowning both fear and the concern that had reigned previously. He regretted ever sending the blasted phone. He should have known Stark would use it for something like this. Two months of complete and utter silence, and now he’s calling him to _taunt him_.

 

“Did you need something or did you just decide to be a jerk?” he asked very coldly.

 

Stark mumbled something indistinct.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“I _said_ I didn’t call you to fight.” More subdued this time, with a drunken teary edge. Something in Steve Rogers gave way a little bit.

 

A bit more softly: “So. Why _did_ you call?”

 

That unintelligible murmur again, as if Tony didn’t exactly _want_ his words to be understood.

 

“I didn’t catch that”, said Steve, catching his breath for a moment, then deliberately letting it go.

 

“I _said: Because I miss you”_ , shouted Tony angrily, this time in a way more discernable manner (it’s as if I can hear him only when he’s mad, Steve thought). “Steve, you complete and utter asshole.” A pause. “I’m... I’m sorry I called.”

 

“It’s okay”, Steve whispered.

 

“I shouldn’t have.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They were both silent for a while. The connection was horrible, choppy and noisy. Or...

 

“Tony...are you... is that...?”

 

“No.” Clear and distinct, too much so.

 

“You’re crying, aren’t you?”

 

“I’m drunk, leave me alone. Drunk people are supposed to cry!”

 

 _And I wonder what I’m supposed to do about these contractions in my chest_ , Steve thought. _No one ever thought me how to deal with something like this._ He realized he was crouching, clutching the phone to his ear, leaning desperately into it, as if that would help him hear any better, understand better. Becoming aware of his legs, he sat heavily on the floor. For a moment he thought someone was standing at the door – a shadow that disappeared quickly as soon as he started to turn his head. So, Natasha then.

 

“Tony?” he said softly after the sniffling had died down a bit on the other side. “Tony, what can I do?”  


A pause, a clear line for once. He could hear nothing but his own breathing. For a horrible moment he thought the phone had picked that very moment to go dead. Then, somewhat muffled, a whisper: “Could you maybe come over?”

 

The Captain was already on his feet, striding through the base. Dressed in his tracksuit, as per usual, he grabbed a pair of jeans off a back of a chair, on his way to his room.

 

“Hey, that’s mine!” Wanda cried after him, shocked. He was aware of running steps behind him, turned to see Natasha with a mildly amused expression around her eyes.

 

He looked at the pants he had thrown over his shoulder in a hurry.

 

“This”, he said, stopping and looking at them in wonder, “is not mine. It’s too small.”

 

“Because it’s Wanda’s”, Natasha said, deadpan. “Need any help getting dressed? As in, someone to find you clothes that actually fit?” He left her in the corridor and slammed the door in a hurry. “A tip”, her amused voice came through the door. “Take one of the two items of clothing you actually own. Put them on. Pants go on your legs, FYI.”

 

“He’s drinking again”, he told her hurriedly as he emerged from his room, dressed in a pair of jeans but naked from the waste up, and strode off as fast as his legs would carry him.

 

Natasha was running after him. “What are you going to do? Steve? Steve, a _shirt_ , please!”

 

He snatched something off an arm of a sofa: a grayish T-shirt with something on it (he never stopped to look). “Hey, that’s mi... oh, go ahead, never mind.” Sam said, and half stood up from the sofa where he’d been reading the paper. “What’s going on?” He directed the question at Natasha, since Steve was already vanishing through the door, pulling his Ramones T-shirt on.

 

“Apparently he heard from Tony.”

 

“Crap.”

 

They both dashed after him. In a great hurry, he was almost loping through the corridors.

 

“Where are you going? Steve?”

 

“Apparently”, he said, suddenly stopping dead in his tracks, “I’m coming over. _Going_ over. Whatever.”

 

“What, all the way to the U. S.?” The Captain just turned on his heels and continued on his merry way. “Wait, Steve, you’re in no state to fly, _I’ll take you..._ ”

 

And so Sam had flown him to the U. S. Thanks to Rhodey, the Accords were being revised at the moment and the Avengers’ fugitive status had been revoked for the time being.

 

And then, many hours later, he had arrived at Tony’s mansion. Second thoughts had had plenty of time to take root, grow, bloom and wither. Third thoughts had passed, and forth thoughts were now in full swing, as he rang what he called a doorbell because he had no better word for it.

 

And what greeted him was a snarling apparition of a somewhat emaciated but very angry Tony Stark, hair filthy and plastered to his head, with black circles around his eyes and traces of keyboard engraved on his cheek.

 

He _stank_. Horribly. His suit is in a half-finished, limbo-like state. And then he was lying there on the ground, glaring at Steve disdainfully, asking him why he had come.

 

Steve was asking himself the same question. A cold fury has started somewhere in the vicinity of his toes, than surged up to his groin, and then upwards, until it enveloped his brain, his face, his eyes. For a moment there he thought he was going to smash that snarky face once and for all. But now he just knelt there, on Stark’s chest, looking at him in disgust. _I’m an idiot_ , he told himself slowly. _People tried to tell me, but would I listen? No._

 

Tony’s breath could have killed an army of small animals.

 

“Could you... not breathe at me?”, he said, wrinkling his nose, then gave up. He stood.

 

“Up.” His tone could have been used for cutting marble. “Stark. Up. Inside. And take that ridiculous thing off.”

 

 


	2. The Unavoidable Shower Scene (But Not the Way You Think)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this on the beach :-) By hand. I have a lot more, it will be up as soon as I manage to type it up. So that you know more is definitely coming soon :)) Also, 7 chapters is just an estimate.

They stepped inside.

 

When Tony got rid of his armor, suddenly it was immensely more difficult to stand. Rogers was looking at him with eyes so narrowed that, in someone else, Tony would have suspected an eye condition. The Captain, blurry around the edges, was looming over him, scowling forcefully. So Tony chose to lean against the wall instead, although it was further away and he had to stumble to the side to get to it. Without any warning, the floor was suddenly looking intensely comfy. Tony decided to try it out. Slid down the wall, closed his eyes, just for a moment.

 

The next thing he knew, he was stumbling down the corridor of his mansion. On his left side, he was leaning against the wall as he walked. On his right, Steve Rogers was holding him up by his elbow, pushing on, steering him roughly around corners.

 

“What are we doing?” Tony asked blearily.

 

“I’m going to try to sober you up so that I can hit you.”

 

Tony nodded. For a second there it almost made sense. Then: “That doesn’t make sense.”

 

“I don’t bloody care,” said the Captain matter-of-factly, striding on and pushing him forward.

 

“I suppose I can’t get a drink before you get down to your business?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh. Thought so.”

 

The next time he came to, or remembered coming to, they’d already made it all the way to his bedroom and his bathroom.

 

“Rogers?”

 

“What?” snapped Rogers.

 

“What exactly are you doing here?”

 

“Oh no, not that again.”

 

“What? I mean here. _Here_ here.” He dug his heels in and looked at him for a second. Steve wasn’t as blurry, perhaps, but looked just as pissed off as before. He wondered how long it had taken the guy to get him all the way up here. “In the U. S.” Tony explained. He was fighting for his words, struggling to sound remotely normal. He had a horrible feeling he sounded like Cookie Monster. “I don’t...”

 

The Captain regarded him sullenly. _I’ve rarely seen him look this tired_ , Tony thought inconsequentially. Then he suddenly remembered he was supposed to hate the man, so he tried, and then tried again, but the emotion itself seemed buried too deeply in alcoholic haze. He knew it was there, somewhere, but he simply couldn’t find it at the moment. He just shrugged inwardly. He can hate him later.

 

“Tony, you called me. On the phone,” Steve said, looking more exasperated than ever.

 

“No, I didn’t.”

 

Abruptly the memory hit him of how he had assaulted the Captain on sight, and he felt a bit bad about it. Just a tiny stab, like a poisonous dart right into his blood stream. He could feel it make its slow way through his veins. He tried to think of a dickworthy comment to shake the feeling off, but his mind was drawing a blank.

Steve just sighed.

 

“I didn’t. I _didn’t_. Why would I call you? I hate you,” Tony informed him. And himself. He was a little surprised at how hollow his words sounded. “And even if I did“, he admitted a beat later, “I wasn’t being myself at the moment.”

 

“Whatever. You can probably look at that phone later, and see that you did call. The info’s probably there on the device, one way or another, I don’t really know how to... just... I don’t care any more.”

 

*****

 

Tony was standing in front of the bathroom door, peering at Steve’s face intently and apparently puzzling over something. He seemed to be working really hard on it, whatever it was. Steve was just sick of everything, and so, so tired. He wanted to slap the man, just once, for good measure (okay, maybe two-tree times). Make him come to his senses. But Stark looked too bewildered, and despite everything, it was evidently wrong to hit a person who was barely standing. A pity, really.

 

“Inside,” Steve cut him off as Tony opened his mouth to spill another pearl of pure wisdom, probably.

 

“But...”

 

“Stark. Inside.”

 

Stark shrugged and obeyed.

 

“Go wash your face. Splash it with cold water.”

 

“Okay, geez.” Tony splashed his face, sputtering a little, tried to comb out his hair with his fingers; gave up.

 

“Feeling more like yourself, now?” Steve asked, with a generous doze of sarcasm.

 

Tony peered at himself in the mirror. “A bit less, actually. Rogers?”

 

“What?”

 

“I really called you, didn’t I?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“So...” Tony began, still scowling at his image in the mirror. “What did I say?” He was turning his face this way and that, obviously quite unhappy with the results. He seemed awfully busy with this, especially too busy to look in the Captain’s direction.

 

“You asked me to come over, that’s all. Get in the shower now.”

 

“Shower?” He looked around wildly.

 

“Yes, the shower. It’s right over there.”

 

“I suppose I must have forgotten where it was”, Tony said dryly.

 

“Well, evidently the two of you haven’t seen each other in a while.”

 

After a second of hesitation, Tony got in. Then he made as if to come back out, as if he’d just remembered something.

 

“ _In_ , Stark.”

 

“My clothes. Need to take ‘em off.” His words were on their way back to slurred again, it seemed, melding into each other where they weren’t supposed to. He swayed on his feet a little bit. _God, this thing seems to be coming and going_ , Steve thought. I _wonder how much of the stuff he’s got in his system. If he asks me what we are doing again, I’m going to bang my head against the wall. Or his. Maybe I can bang my head against his, and the winner (the survivor?) can take on the wall._

 

“Leave the clothes on. Honestly, I’ve no wish to see you naked.” _Or smell you any more than I already do._

 

Tony made as if to come out again but Steve pushed him back, with no surplus of gentleness. Tony lost his balance for a moment, put his hand against the wall, then sat down in the shower, heavily.

 

“I called you, and you... you came?”, he asked in a small voice. “All the way from Africa?”

 

“Yes, I did.” _I’m not falling into the vulnerability trap again_ , Steve thought. He pushed his fists into his pockets, hard, trying to swallow his feelings and be practical, get this done – and failing. “And then you... you _ambushed_ me, you manipulative... you manipulative _arsehole_ ”, he managed finally. He expected a comment, something on the lines of ‘oh, I see your tongue hasn’t fallen off from the cursing’, but the other man just sat in the shower, his clothes all crumpled, resting his chin on his palm, his elbow on his knee, looking a bit ridiculous and smaller than he usually did. This made Steve even angrier, for some reason.

 

“ ’M not manipulative”, Stark murmured finally. “Other things maybe. Not that.”

 

Well, all right, maybe he wasn’t, but that wasn’t the point. And he wasn’t going to charm his way out of this one.

 

When Steve Rogers was a kid, a drunkard had lived down the street from them. Every Friday he would come home and fight with his wife, sometimes even slap her around. Every Saturday, he would wake up, and, having forgotten everything, ask over and over again if she was angry with him, why was she angry with him, why, why. And then he would apologize and cry, every time. Even back then, Steve though forgetting is no excuse. For anything.

 

Pressing his lips together, he leaned over and turned the water on. Stark jumped as it hit his head and shoulders.

 

“Aw!”

 

Steve said nothing.

 

“It’s cold, you miserable fucker!” Tony did look more alert all of a sudden, though.

 

Steve rolled his eyes.

 

“Shut up, Stark.”

 

****

 

The ice-cold water was rolling down Tony’s face, soaking his black long-sleeved T-shirt and his black pants. He couldn’t remember when was the last time he had changed since... ever? He noticed he was shivering. After the initial shock – a welcome shock, really, it brought some of his clarity back – he had kind of stopped being aware of the temperature itself, he just felt the shirt clinging clammily to his skin, and how uncomfortably creaky wet jeans were if you tried to cross your legs. Then small shivers had started. And then more violent chills. He was gritting his teeth now so that they wouldn’t chatter.

 

He stared up at the Captain. Stubbornly.

 

Stuck somewhere between expressionlessness and disgust, the Captain was staring right back.

 

It was a battle of wills.

 

Sleepiness – weirdly enough – was also coming and going. One moment he was alert, his thoughts racing a 100 miles/hour, and the next he could feel the heavy pull of his own eyelids, his head slowly moving, ever downwards.

 

Another shudder shook his whole body.

 

Steve opened his mouth to say something, closed it, pressing his lips together. Opened it again.

 

First to budge, then. Good.

 

“So, for how long are you planning to stay in there, Stark, shivering and playing a martyr?”

 

“Until you’ve slaked your thirst for petty revenge.” Tony smirked a bit. “Rogers.” It had been a long time since he’d had such control over his tongue. It felt almost unnaturally agile.

 

 _I win_ , he thought inconsequentially. _I win, I win._ The way the Captain looked at him, Tony half expected him to step into the shower and break him in half. But Steve just turned the water off, looking aside abruptly.

 

“Oh, get out already, will you.”

 

Tony would have, now. He really would. He had no reason in the world to stay in there. Steve was glaring at him.

 

“Rogers...” Tony swallowed his pride, audibly.

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

“I don’t think I can stand up on my own.”

 


	3. Floored

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not so good at chaptering my fics, so I basically just cut them in smaller pieces randomly. This one is longer, but this was where it seemed logical to divide them.

 

The Captain left him alone in the bathroom to sit on the toilet lid and silently drip onto the floor. Then he came back with a pair of towels. Tossed them to the floor at Tony’s feet. Stormed out again.

 

Tony could hear him rummaging around the room, muttering to himself.

 

Using his alone time, Tony peeled his clothes off, awkwardly, still seated. Dropped them to the floor in utter disgust and dried himself off. He very much wasn’t sure he would be okay standing as yet. As in, upright. On legs.

 

When he heard Steve approach the door, he dropped the towel too, out of sheer spite.

 

Rogers glared at him, then looked away quickly and dumped an armful of clothes to the floor. There was an awful lot of textile on the floor at the moment. The Captain should know. He was studying the piles furiously, with a pale flush creeping up his cheeks.

 

Tony, naked, grinned to himself, just a little: score. He bent over to pick up the clothes, almost fell over, but caught himself.

 

A tracksuit bottom. A crumpled old T-shirt. Trust the man to find something fitting his own fashion sense, even in the rooms of Tony Stark. “My old, dirty gym clothes?”

 

“Way cleaner than what you were wearing not 5 minutes ago,” Steve said dully, still avoiding to look at him directly.

 

“Fair point, Rogers,” Tony smirked again, pushing it, pushing _him_ as far as he’d go, not even quite sure why. “Fair... point.” Except because the red hot embarrassment about everything was catching up to him, together with horrible weariness and painful clarity of thought. They were chafing against his mind. He wanted his haze back. Haze was good. You couldn’t see a thing through it.

 

Also, he was feeling like shit about absolutely everything.

 

Steve kicked the filthy clothes and the wet towels to the side with far more viciousness than they, strictly speaking, deserved. “Well, I brought this upon myself, didn’t I,” he muttered.

 

He caught Tony by the elbow – so hard Tony thought it would surely bruise – and pulled him to his feet. “Get _dressed_ , Stark.” A short, measuring look. “Can you do it by yourself? _Tell_ me you can do it by yourself.”

 

He was still feeling excessively weak (especially in the legs; and well, the arms; and body). Still, he managed. It was a matter of pride. Stupid to be even thinking about pride in the current circumstances, but we salvage what we can, he supposed.

 

It was easier to think about putting an arm down a sleeve than about all the other things.

 

Stepping over the threshold, he experienced a sudden tiny pang of loss, as if he was letting go of a sliver of safety he had somehow felt inside.. He almost missed his cold shower.

 

Steve seemed almost as much at a loss as to what to do now. They were both just standing there, looking uncomfortably around. Then:

 

“Okay. Okay. How are you feeling now?”

 

“Er... clean-ish?”

 

“Stark.” The work came out almost as a growl.

 

“Well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Like shit? Like I can barely stand? Like a total asshole – as you wisely put it – for attacking you at the door? You didn’t have to do all this, you know. You _do_ know that, don’t you? It’s totally not your job.”

 

Rogers shrugged noncommittally. “I’m checking you into a rehab tomorrow anyway.”

 

“Er... No you are not.”

 

“Yes. I am.”

 

“No. You’re _not_.”

 

Tony freed his elbow from his now unresisting grip and managed to get to the bed in just a mildly undignified manner. Sat down.

 

The Captain was tapping his foot. Glaring at him with a dangerous scowl.

 

“Stark, you are of course aware I can get you there whether you want it or not.”

 

“Rogers?”

 

“What?”

 

Tony regarded him for a second, an eyebrow raised. “You do know people have to check in voluntarily?”, he asked mildly. “Steve? You didn’t know, did you?”

 

“I suppose I never stopped to think about it”, the other man grumbled in response. He seemed mildly embarrassed under all that looming decisiveness. “I suppose it’s logical.”

 

 _Of course it’s logical, you idiot_ , Tony thought, _or else everyone would be checking in anyone they disliked._

 

Then it was as if his perpetual confidence came back to Steve Rogers, this time in triple force.

 

“But, you are, of course, going to sign”, he said, disallowing any disagreement.

 

“Am not.”

 

“You are.”

 

“No. I’m not. I’m having a _deja vu_ here.”

 

“Well, I can’t go on taking care of you like this.” He was raising his voice steadily, with every word. Never losing momentum. “Or, to be precise, Stark, I don’t _want_ to!”

 

“Well, _no one fucking asked you to!”_

 

If Tony was standing upright and if Steve was not so freakishly tall – they would have been standing nose to nose, screaming into each others' faces, like cats. As it was, Tony felt, his position was kind of underwhelming here. He was not impressed with himself.

 

The Captain didn’t seem to have noticed the problem, he just went on yelling: “You asked me to, you... you _jerk_.”

 

Tony deflated like a mournful balloon. He hadn’t even noticed he had been half way to actually standing up until his legs gave out and his ass thumped back onto the bed.

 

“Guess I did, at that,” he said glumly.

 

Rogers nodded his head once, sharply, triumphantly, as if saying: “There!” Then the second wind hit him. “But you don’t remember it, so it doesn’t count, does it, Stark?!”

 

But the moment for shouting seemed to have passed. Tony just shrugged a little bit and looked away. There was silence. They both seemed somewhat embarrassed. Tony found a perfect solution to a squeaky situation. “Well, you were an idiot to come”, he informed a spot about a foot above Steve’s head.

 

Tony _knew_ he had gone to far. He knew it as he drew breath to say those words, he knew it as they were leaving his mouth.

 

Rogers didn’t even wince. He seemed even more viciously triumphant than before. As if he had been expecting something like this all along. As if he had bet on it, and now he had won.

 

“Steve...” Tony began, more mildly than he had ever heard himself speak, perhaps. _Perfectly unnatural!_

 

He waited for a response in the form of a sharp, half-shouted _what?_ , but it never came.

 

Tony began again. “I’m...” But how could he apologize for something he had actually _meant_? Apologies like that were self-serving; he hated them. “I shouldn’t have said that.” There, that’s better. He hesitated. “Thank you for coming.” To himself, he sounded like a shopkeeper: _thank you for your business, please come again._ “I’m... grateful for what you attempted to do”, he tried again. He didn’t _sound_ grateful. They were both aware of it. “But, look...” Abruptly, he just gave up. “Dammit, Rogers, everyone has the right to kill themselves slowly in their own way, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

 

There. That, at least, was completely sincere.

 

****

 

“Fine.” Steve was repeating this as a mantra in his head. Maybe aloud too, occasionally. He wasn’t at all sure. “Fine, fine, fine.”

 

Until tomorrow, he told himself. I’m going to put up with this until tomorrow. In the morning, I’ll talk to him again. If he still won’t go to a rehabilitation center, fine ( _fine, fine, fine_ ). His bloody problem. I’m done. Wants to drink himself to death? Just go ahead, Stark.

 

When he no longer has an audience, maybe he’ll stop. But, no. He’d drawn away everyone else. He even sent Rhodey to work on the Accords, and dispatched Vision to help him, so that he himself could get dedicated to self destruction in peace. The man didn’t need an audience. He was self-sufficient. He was his own favorite audience.

 

Steve decided to stick to the practical approach. Just get through the night. One way or another, tomorrow he’ll be on his way and this will no longer be his problem.

 

“Food,” he declared suddenly, as if breaking a spell. Tony gave a bitter laugh.

 

“Well, good luck with that.”

 

“You have to eat something,” Steve said dully. That’s right. Baby steps. Make him eat. Don’t get into arguments. Get some water into him. Put him to bed.

_He’s not going to appreciate any of this_ , he told himself, and then: _That’s probably for the best. I don’t need to deal with the baggage of his appreciation._

A few hours. That was all.

 

“Look, Rogers, normally I‘d agree with you. This time, however, I don’t think my stomach is going to comply with your greater wisdom.” A pause. Then, not so dryly: “No, really, if I eat anything now, I‘ll be barfing half the night.”

 

Tony tried a small smile, damn him. “Experience’s on my side here, Cap.”

 

 _Oh, no you don’t_. Steve just scowled, figuring it was easier not to look at the other man at all.

 

“How long, Tony?” he asked, turning his back and aimlessly rearranging the items on the table behind him. So many empty beer cans, so many dirty tumblers. Damn him to hell. This was phase one. Steve had gotten a peak into his study on the way to the bedroom. There, it was mostly bottles. Phase 2. “When was the last time you actually ate something?”

 

“I don’t know.” A beat. “Never?” He lay back on the bed, leaning onto his elbows.

 

Amongst all the garbage, Steve dug up a half eaten box of crackers. He threw it, resisting his first impulse. It landed on Stark’s stomach instead.

 

“You’ll get the crumbles all over my bed,” the man complained.

 

Steve regretted not throwing it right into his face after all.

 

“How long?” he repeated then.

 

“Look, I really don’t remember.” He sniffed at the crackers. “Hey, this doesn’t make me instantaneously sick to my stomach,” he commented in wonder, turning the box this way and that in his hands. Then he peered at it curiously. “I’ll have to remember the brand.”

 

Steve started pacing from the huge bed, to the huge table, to the huge mirror (really, Tony was a megalomaniac!), stepping over discarded clothing, books, beer cans, garbage. He said nothing, kicked at an empty glass. It gave a satisfying _clink_ as it hit the wall. Then he stopped in his tracks, turned abruptly, scowled.

 

“How _long_??”

 

Tony shrugged helplessly. “I suppose I must have eaten something at some point or I wouldn’t be here."

 

Steve raised a crumpled beer can.

 

“No. _This_. How long?”

 

“The drinking?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Just let it go, Rogers.”

 

“If I have to say ‘how long’ one more time, I’ll...” He trailed off, unable to think of an appropriate threat.

 

“Okay. Fine.” There was something deeply unsettling in Tony’s eyes as he reached over to the bedside table and opened the drawer. “Since you won’t let it go.” He threw a horribly crumpled piece of paper at Steve’s head. The Captain’s first instinct was to duck. He then picked the thing up from the floor, straightened it painstakingly.

 

“Have you been eating on this?”, were the first words to come into his head, uninvited. They were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

 

“Dug it up from the garbage after I threw it away.” On multiple occasions, apparently.

 

“So, you’ve been trying to drink yourself to death ever since I sent you my letter of _apology_?”, Steve asked incredulously. His first impulse was to get offended. You put your heart out there, offer an olive branch after all that had happened, try – tentatively – to reach out to this... this big jerk, offer him contact. What does he do? He throws it in the garbage, obviously, what else. Starts self-destructing.

 

Then Steve’s heart suddenly went very still as he realized something. “Tony, you haven’t been drinking constantly for two months”, he asked very softly, “ _have_ you?” All of a sudden, he could barely breathe.

 

It was, however, as if Tony hadn’t heard a word he said after ‘letter of apology’. He was on his feet, quick as thought, stumbled, regained his balance. His eyes were cooking stoves of hell. He was clenching his fists, advancing on the Captain like a thunderstorm.

 

“Your letter of apology”, he was growling. “Your letter of _apology_.”

 

On pure reflex, Steve took a step back.

 

“Your _letter_ of _apology_ was a pathetic muddle of half-digested old phrases and tropes, it meant _nothing._ ” He was not screaming in Steve’s face. His voice had gone hoarse, like he was barely squeezing it through the gravel in his throat. His fists were up, but not as if he was going to strike, but like he was trying to hold onto something in front of him – something that simply wasn’t there.

 

Steve took him by the shoulders, shook him. Then he steadied him, guiltily. “Two _months_ ”, he repeated. “Do you even realize how long that is?”

 

“Six whole sentences, was it, Rogers?”, his tone now turned to pure venom. “How did you think of them, pray? Did you find a template on the internet?”

 

“You didn’t like my apology because it was too _short_ for your tastes?”, said Steve incredulously.

 

“And by the way, it’s none of your business what I’m doing. You made it not your business when you left me there in Siberia. So why all this shit now? Just leave me alone. I was doing all right.”

 

Steve scoffed. A cold dread and red hot anger were coursing through him, and where they met, there was, well, melting and boiling and steam. And it was all staying on the inside. Like in a pressure cooker.

 

“Let go of me”, Tony snarled, and Steve belatedly realized he still had his hands on the man’s shoulders. He exhaled deliberately and let him go. He didn’t know where to begin, so he just stood there in silence. Then, quietly:

 

“This is your ‘doing all right’?” He vaguely waved his hand around.

 

“As I said, none of your fucking business.”

 

 _I should have come earlier_ , was all Steve could think. _Two months, **two months.**_ “How can you...”, he began; stopped. Tried again. It could almost be called curiosity, if there weren’t so much pain involved. “How can you be that drunk for two months straight and not fall over dead? Without your heart giving out?”

 

Tony smiled crookedly, deflected a hand that Steve had – unconsciously – raised to touch him on the shoulder. Then he went and sat back down on the bed. He stuffed a cracker into his mouth, made a face, but started chewing. Even that was presumably better than answering Steve’s questions, Steve thought.

 

“You are not pissed halfway to death _all_ of the time”, Tony said matter-of-factly and swallowed with some difficulty. “God, this is stale. It’s dry, but still somehow soft. _And_ crumbly.” He said in apparent puzzlement. Then he went on. “You drink to smooth things over, to make the day go easier – or go away, depending on the day, obviously. You mostly... function, I guess. I mean, I was working on my suit, for example.”

 

“Great job there”, muttered Steve.

 

“Screw you, Rogers. And then, by the time evening comes, you are usually pissed, but at some point you mostly somehow manage to fall asleep, so that’s over. Things go away.” He was sounding coldly analytical. Then he stuffed two more crackers into his mouth and went on, his words somewhat muffled. “And then you have the days you get completely pissed from the early morning on, because that’s just that kind of a day. A few in a row, and you usually get sick, so you tone the drinking down a little until you get back to your feet. And then the whole circle starts all over again.” He stopped to ponder this for a moment and nodded. “I hope this satisfies your curiosity, Rogers. Me, I’m going to bed. You can sleep in one of the guest rooms if you want. Pardon my lack of hospitality”, he added very dryly, “but right now I really need to faint.”

 

Steve was still standing there. Then: “I’m not leaving you in here alone.”

 

“Noble”, muttered Tony sarcastically. “Because...?”

 

“Because, Stark, you are just going to get trashed again as soon as I step out.”

 

“Of course I am. What’s the big deal? I mean, I’m going to get pissed as soon as you leave, anyway, and you can’t baby-sit me for ever. So what’s the biggie?”

 

“Not while I’m here, then”, Steve growled at him.

 

“Suit yourself. Plenty of room on the floor. FYI, no way are you sleeping in my bed.”

 

“You’re not seriously going to make me sleep on the floor? Tony?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“It’s a _huge bed_.”

 

“I don’t care. It’s a private space.” He tossed a pillow on the floor. “There. See how gracious I am.”

 

“You’re just being petty.”

 

“Yep.”

 

Apparently quite satisfied with this exchange, Tony sprawled over the bed diagonally, taking as much space as possible, turned the light off and turned his back to Steve.

 

Resignedly, Steve went to the bathroom for a glass of water. The one with the toothbrush in it looked cleanest, so he took it. He hesitated, but didn’t have the stomach to engage in another argument. He didn’t want to listen to Tony’s voice right now, he really didn’t. He had had enough of it for one night. So he just quietly put the glass on Tony’s bedside table and lay down on the floor. On his side. His back turned to the bed.

 

He had been awake for how many hours straight, now? A whole day in Wakanda (it had been evening there when Tony called). Then maybe six or seven hours of flight. And then all this. How many? More than 24, that was for sure.

 

He needed to sleep. He couldn’t.

 

So he just curled up around the coldness in the pit of his stomach, trying desperately to keep it warm – and failing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm probably writing this too factographically, not skipping enough and not taking shortcuts. But... I don't know, apparently that's how this fic demands to be written, and I'm trying to get the emotions right, and I honestly hope it's not too boring.


	4. Bolts in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite chapter so far. Hope you guys like it. A tiny portion of sweetness there towards the end :)

Tony was staring into darkness. At the wall. Well, he couldn’t _see_ the wall, but he knew it was there, so technically he was staring _towards it_ even if he couldn’t perceive it.

 

He sighed.

 

“Rogers, will you stop moving around? I can’t sleep.”

 

“I haven’t moved one muscle since I lay down.”

 

“Well, you are being restless while actively trying to keep still”, Tony said gruffly. “I can hear you.”

 

“Shut up, Tony.”

 

“Don’t you ‘Tony’ me. You’re angry with me, I’m angry with you. I call you Rogers, you call me Stark. That’s how it goes. This is the good old, well-tried high-school dynamic. Don’t spoil it.”

 

“Go to sleep.”

 

He tried, but his mind, his ribcage were burning with all the things he wanted to shout out loud but had no energy to. In his heart, he was yelling and smashing things. No. In his heart he was _hurting_ , but the yelling and smashing were the usual consequences, just an outward emanation of the feeling. Not so now. He was for some reason deprived of his usual venting system. It was in apparent disrepair.

 

What do normal people _do_ with this much pain, he wondered, stepping back from his feelings and regarding them with a certain amount of fascination. Do normal people even _feel_ this much pain? How do they contain it all? Tony wasn’t a fit container for something like this. He wasn’t made of the right material. He was going to explode – and then what?

 

“ _If you need me, call me_ , no really, Rogers”, he muttered viciously. “Simply wonderful.”

 

“I’m trying to sleep.”

 

“Almost like a pop song”, Tony went on. “No, wait, I think there _is_ a pop song with lyrics like that. Is that where you get your inspiration from?”

 

A moment of silence.

 

“That’s not even what I wrote.”

 

“Well, it’s close enough.”

 

Steve half sat up. Tony could hear him but refused to turn around and look.

 

“Look, I’m sorry my apology wasn’t up to your standards. Didn’t measure up. I did the best I could. What I thought, what I felt, I wrote it down. That’s all there is.”

 

“Rogers”, Tony addressed the wall. “It sounded exactly like the drivel people tell each other all the time. You cannot possibly be unaware of this. ‘Promise you’ll call sometime.’ You promise. Then you never do call, obviously. They _know_ you never will. ‘We have to do this again, sometime.’ ‘We can stay friends.’ You never do. _No one_ ever does. ‘If you need me, I’ll be there’. It means nothing at _all_.”

 

“You know what, whatever you want to read into it, it’s your problem. I meant every single... you know what, just leave me alone.”

 

Tony did for a while. His back was a battlefield of pain. He’d spent too many nights sleeping at his desk of late. He wanted to turn around. Which would mean turning towards _him_. Completely out of question.

 

“You attacked _me_ , you attacked _Bucky_ , you destroyed everything”, he heard just as he was desperately trying to think of another acerbic comment he could throw into the darkness. “And I sent you an apology, a peace offering. What did you do to reach out? Nothing. You sulked with your whiskey. You’re a child.”

 

“I’m not _sulking_ ”, Tony burst, sitting up. “You tried to _kill_ me, you fuck!”

 

“You tried to kill _me._ ”

 

“No, I tried to kill your friend. You chose to put yourself in the way.”

 

“Yes, because you tried to kill an innocent man – no, no, don’t say anything, I know what you are going to say, so don’t. Yes, I stopped you. Because apparently you think it’s okay to go berserk and hurt everyone because of _your_ loss, because of _your_ revenge, because _you’re_ angry and hurt. Well, guess what, Stark? Other people have lost people too. Everyone copes somehow. But no one...” Steve fell silent, as if he had suddenly run out of words.

 

Tony wasn’t aware that he had sat up, his hands tightly encircling his legs; he just suddenly noticed his cheek resting on his knee. A headache was coming on. And every word – every word was like an icicle stuck in him, under his shoulder blades, along his spine, in the back of his neck. Mere mirror images of the words he kept whispering to himself day in and day out.

 

It was worse when you heard them from someone else.

 

He hugged his knees all the way to his chest and squeezed with all his might.

 

In a tightly, very controlled voice, he said: “I _know_ he is innocent. _Technically_. I wouldn’t try to kill him on sight now.”

 

“What do you want, a medal?”

 

“Steve...” He stopped. They were both very still. _You’re expecting an apology, you fucker, aren’t you_ , Tony thought. _After all of that. **You**._ _An **apology**. _ From _ **me**._ “If you’d told me about my parents before, it wouldn’t have happened like that”, he said unrelentingly, not giving a single inch.

 

“Everyone has self control up to a point, even you. You just _chose_ not to exercise it at that moment. To you, that was _acceptable._ ”

 

“I was in _pain_ , you idiot”, Tony roared. Then he just fell back onto the bed and put his hands behind his head, crossed his legs. “Sorry”, he said coldly. “For some reason, I keep expecting you to care about such. I should know better.”

 

A pause grew long.

 

“Look, I know you meant it. I mean, now I do, now I know,” Tony said. He wanted to fill the silence, to fill all the silences, just pour out all the thoughts that were coursing through his head. Get rid of them. Stop the damn things from multiplying, lest his head explodes. “As soon as I said _come_ , you came. So yeah. You meant it. I get it. Just wanted to make that clear.” He was aware his train of thought was meandering wildly but, he mused in a sidetrack of his mind, that’s what happens when you mull over something for two months. Just rummage through it in your head and never ever tell anyone.

 

“I...” Steve began suddenly, long after Tony had stopped expecting any response. “I didn’t tell you because...”

 

He fell silent. _Stopped, just like that_ , Tony thought. _I didn’t tell you, because. That’s it._

 

“Because you were trying to spare both me and yourself, yadda yadda”, he said gruffly. He was very tired. This wasn’t going anywhere. “You know, that’s another lie people always tell you. ‘It was for your own good.’" Steve took a breath, as if to intercept his words, but Tony just went on: “Look, Steve, I know, okay? You're you. Being the insufferably righteous fucker you are, you probably did want to spare me up to a point. You meant what you said. Okay. Just let it go. I can’t, true, but that’s my fucking problem, isn’t it? _I_ need to deal with it.”

 

“I need to get something in the clear”, Steve said hesitantly, and as Tony said nothing, he went on slowly: “As a matter of fact, I mostly didn’t tell you because I was afraid of your reaction.”

 

A dangerous silence.

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

“I... thought you might react just like you did. And then you did. I’m..”

 

“So you thought it a good idea for me to find out on my own, in the middle of a _mission_?”, Tony asked in outrage.

 

“It’s not as if I exactly _planned_ it that way.” A pause. “I’m really sorry.”

 

“So what? So what if you are sorry?”, Tony shouted. “And how exactly do you expect me to react to _this_? Thanks for your honesty finally, by the way. Now at least I _know_. But, you know what, if you consider me a liability, then at least have the intelligence to _treat_ me like one and stop endangering the missions. You got a volatile element? You set it off in a _controlled fucking environment_. You don’t just let it sit there, and keep wondering if it would explode or not! Everyone knows that, Rogers!” Tony was shouting now. “Everyone!”

 

Infuriated, Tony turned his back again, in attempt to contain it all inside, just keep it under _control_. He wanted to kick the fucker in the face and scream _how could you not have any faith in me? Me? After everything I’ve done?_ Control. He hugged himself as tightly as he was able to. He thought his heart would give out from pure exertion. Just snap. Done.

 

He lay there on his side, listening to the Captains belabored breathing. Breath in. A long breath out. Even a longer breath in. How can anyone have that much lung capacity? Oh, there it goes again. Breath out.

 

“It’s not just that you didn’t tell me”, Tony said after a time, softly, exhaustedly. “It’s the way I thought you were going to behead me with that fucking shield. I thought you really would. Hadn’t I stopped struggling... I still think you might have.”

And it wouldn’t be a particularly big loss for anyone involved, he thought, but kept that one to himself. Self pity was his special treat, reserved for himself exclusively.

 

And, to this, Rogers said nothing. Tony had been hoping – stupidly – for denial of his presumptions, but no. That’s what you get for fishing, he thought, too tired for real bitterness: absolutely nothing at all.

 

Ten minutes passed.

 

Fifteen.

 

He felt empty. But empty... empty wasn’t bad at all. It’d been ages since he really let anything out. Emptiness was pure _bliss_.

 

“Rogers?”

 

Nothing. Just that breathing.

 

“You asleep?”

 

“No.” Coldly.

 

“Get up from that floor, will you.”

 

“What? _No._ ”

 

“Don’t be an idiot. It’s a big bed.”

 

“Leave me alone.”

 

 _I’m not going to ask you again_ , Tony thought. _Rot in hell_. But the words that came out were: “It’s really spacious. Huge.”

 

“No.”

 

“Two people could _live_ in this bed without even meeting each other for days on end.”

 

The Captain stirred a little. Maybe turning around, getting up on his elbow.

 

“Look”, Tony said, never turning his face towards him. But he moved all the way to the far side. “I’ll take the right-hand side, you take the left. It’s all yours, buddy. Plenty of space in between. We don’t even need to look at each other. So, basically, take it or leave it, but I’m all the way over here, so that you know, and that side there is all empty, and my back is turned. And also”, he added, “I promise to shut up. For tonight.”

 

Scuffling of feet. Then he felt the mattress give way under a big man’s weight. _Okay_ , Tony thought. _Okay, then._ He allowed himself a tiny sigh of content. Smiled a small smile. Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the next chapter pretty much finished, just need to type it up (and do some rewriting/editing). After that I may slow down a little bit. I think I need to write it all up before I post further so that I don't mess up the dynamic. I need to see where exactly this goes. I mean, I know where it goes, but I need to see how to get from here to there convincingly.
> 
> It will be done soon, though. I'm working on it full time.
> 
> I hope I don't end up with three end notes this time. I don't know how to remove the old ones :/


	5. In The Silent Hour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for all your wonderful comments and kudos. This is a small, peaceful chapter.

 

Of course Steve hadn’t expected Tony to fall on his knees when he saw Steve at the door.

 

No.

 

Tony would smirk at him, and then they would clasp hands, and maybe they would hold onto each other a bit (but just a bit) longer than is strictly necessary. Tony would usher him inside. And there would be a mutual, nonverbal understanding that they had both been idiots, but it was all in the past now. Because they were friends, and they knew and understood each other. That’s how it was supposed to go.

 

Occasionally there was hugging.

 

Sometimes, Steve would hold Tony for a second too long and whisper to him he was sorry and – in the scenarios that unraveled in Steve’s mind in the darkest hours of the night – there would even be a tear or two involved (a manly tear that just slid down your cheek while your facial expression stayed unchanged, like in the movies – the old movies, the _real_ movies). A tear from either of them, or both. But then Tony would graciously make a quip to defuse the situation, and it would be done, and they would go on as before, but maybe a little closer than that, maybe with more care not to be jerks to each other.

 

Then there was the going-on-a-mission-together scenario: they are forced to do it, but they are not speaking to each other, and then they save each other’s lives (preferably at the very same moment). And they just exchange grins, and no words are necessary, and they know they are okay.

 

(Okay, so there was also this one where they never really reconciled, but nevertheless started playing chess every Wednesday when they turned old and gray, but that one was actually horrible, what with the fact that they had not seen each other for the previous 30 whole years, almost until they were in their graves. Steve didn’t like remembering that one.)

 

But his favorite fantasies were the ones where Tony needed him oh-so-much (for various, often unspecified reasons), and Steve would come and take care of him until he got better, and that would be enough.

 

Steve rarely analyzed these scenarios, because they made him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable in the daylight, but they all had one common denominator.

 

In none of them had Tony been this angry.

 

In all of them he had either already forgiven Steve or he was ready to.

 

Also, in none of them had Steve himself been angry with Tony because Tony was not doing well (And what the heck is that all about, what the hell is wrong with me?) (But look at him, just _look_ at him, look what he is doing to himself! How can I not be angry?)

 

In his fantasies Steve was gentle and full of understanding. He didn’t push Tony around by his elbow, or into cold showers, nor did he shout things into his face. (But just look at him, he’s _destroying_ himself. On _purpose_!) (No, not on purpose) (Maybe a little on purpose.)

 

But, oh my god, he’s in so much pain, it’s killing him... His poor parents... And then I keep adding to that. If he would only stop yelling so much, so that I can try and comfort him. Maybe I could at least ease the part that _I’m_ causing. I need to try and be gentler with him, how can I be having a problem with that? But he’s driving me insane. One moment I want to throw him right through the floor, the next moment I want to run down there and catch him... How do I figure this out? (Why does he have to yell at me so much?) (It’s probably healthy that he’s yelling at me.)

 

And he always knows what will hurt the most, and then he says exactly that, _zing_ , straight into the target, like Clint with his arrows. (Speaking of Clint, I should call Sam or Natasha, they must be worried.) (Tomorrow.) (I don’t care.)

 

And the way his mind works! He keeps moving from one thing to another, it’s like being under barrage fire, and before I have had the time to digest one thing he’s said, he’s already moved on, _bam_ , the next salvo, straight at my heart.

 

And then I want to hurt him right back, and I say something back, and I see it has worked, and then I want to go put my head through a window pane.

 

You shouldn’t let him do this to you, Sam has said. Stark says jump, you jump. He’s pushing your buttons.

 

But Sam doesn’t understand Tony, he sees just the surface. Okay, so I don’t really understand Tony either, but I know he’s in pain, and I don’t want him to be. And maybe I _like_ that he’s pushing my buttons. (This would probably be far less complicated with someone less complicated.) (I don’t want someone less complicated.)

 

It was with this thought that he fell asleep.

 

****

 

When Steve woke up, it was still dark. He slowly became aware he was alone in the big bed. Then he was on his feet in an instant. _Well, he made a fool out of me all right_ , was his first, angry thought. He was surprised to discover he was actually surprised. He had expected other crap from Stark. Not this. How naive.

 

“Now, where would he go to have a drink?”, he muttered to himself. “His study, probably”, he decided, and he was on his way, swallowing the distance to the door in big strides.

 

 _No, wait_ , he said, stopping abruptly. He needed to calm down. This was not the way to deal with this. He’d promised himself he’d be less angry. How do you keep a promise like that once you’re _already_ angry? He took a deep breath, another, tried to find in himself the place he had been right before he’d fallen asleep, lying there beside Tony, studying the silhouette of his back.

 

_Okay._

 

And then he suddenly remembered something Tony had said earlier that night, felt like an ass, turned back. Peered into the bathroom.

 

Sure enough, a still form was lying curled up on the floor near the toilet bowl. Soundly asleep.

 

Was Tony doing this in order to look pathetic? Nope, definitely not his style. Besides, it wasn’t working. He looked oddly peaceful, like a strange bathroom sculpture, a one that would probably be named _Loneliness_ , Steve mused. Pathetic? Not so much.

 

Almost otherworldly, rather, a darker shadow in the darkness; Steve didn’t know if he was supposed to wake him up or not.

 

_If I try to move him, he’ll probably bite my head off. Probably tell me he knows damn well what he’s doing._

 

The floor under Steve’s bare feet was pleasantly lukewarm. _Underfloor heating_ , he decided.

 

_Okay._

 

He turned and went back into the bedroom. Then he thought for a second, grabbed one of the duvets lying at the foot of the bed. _In case he needs it_ , he whispered to himself in his mind as he carefully put the still folded cover down on the floor next to Tony.

 

He started to leave, turned back. Took the duvet and covered his friend very gently, taking care not to wake him. Tony murmured a little something in his sleep, wrapped himself in the comforter and went on sleeping peacefully. Okay, that looked way better. _To bed with you, now, leave him alone or you’ll wake him_ , he ordered himself and turned to go.

 

This time he made it all the way to the bed before he turned on his heels, went back.

 

Gingerly, hesitantly, he scooped Tony into his arms and lifted him off the floor together with the duvet.

 

It was clumsy as all hell.

 

Steve was very strong, yes, but lifting a full-size man that way is simply ungainly. It’s not just the matter of weight or body volume. You are supposed to be handling a big, long, limp body, a body with lots of limbs (or it sure seems that way!), all hanging lose. And then there was his stupid head that hung clumsily over Steve’s arm, and Steve had no idea what he was supposed to do with it.

 

When you have to carry adults – say, out of a burning building – the easiest way is generally to throw them over your shoulder. But with someone who has very evidently spent some time vomiting (a yellow watery substance and half-digested crackers), that’s probably not such a good idea. There’s often more where it came from.

 

So Steve tried to get a better hold of him, to put Tony’s head against his, Steve’s, shoulder so that it wouldn’t dangle at such an unnatural angle.

 

But, _oh my god, he’s so close, he’s so warm, and I can’t believe I’m here and holding him like this._

_If he wakes up, he’ll kill me_. It probably looked undignified as all hell.

 

Tony’s eyelids fluttered. Steve went completely still. But Tony just snuggled closer to him. Never quite opening his eyes, he smiled a sleepy little smile, buried his head into Steve’s chest and murmured something that very much resembled: “Thank you, Stevie.”

 

Very gently, Steve put him down on the bed and tucked the quilt around him. Tony bunched some of the duvet into his fist, turned to lie on his left side, placing a cheek on his arm, and curled his legs, hugging the covers to him.

 

 _I’m getting in too deep, too fast_ , Steve warned himself.

 

 _Everyone_ looks vulnerable when they are asleep, he tried telling himself. He swallowed a painful tenderness (a weird, inexplicable night-time feeling) and lay quietly down on his side of the bed.

 

Looking at Tony like this, it was so easy to forget all the things he said, all his deliberate jabs at you, his talent to sniff out where you hurt the most and stick his finger straight into the biggest bruise, and twist. _When I called you, I wasn’t being myself. You were an idiot to come. Did you get the template off of the internet? Sounds just like that pop song._ _I thought you would kill me I thought you would kill me I thought you would kill me._ And then, just when you decide to never say a word to him again, he say's _thank you Stevie_ , or...

 

“Steve?” Quietly, sleepily, a half-whisper into the pillow.

 

“Yeah?”, Steve whispered back, his throat getting tight.

 

“Don’t go.”

 

Steve didn’t.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter gave me such warm fuzzies :-) I hope you guys like it too. More drama to come, because nothing is really over, obviously, but I think this is a nice interlude. (Please tell me what you think)
> 
> Next chapter soon to come. Probably not tomorrow, but maybe the day after. I have a ton of material, but I have to put it in some kind of order. Thank you guys for reading <3


	6. Hanging Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Lore.

It wasn’t even a hangover any more; it was a way of life. Waking up in the morning was like clawing your way out of a grave. And then you’d peer out, through all that soil and shit, and realize it had been better inside the grave, dammit, so maybe you could try to sink back for a little while, but no, it’s too late.

 

With a minuscule motion Tony moved his head and lifted his right eyelid; it was sticky.

 

Steve was lying there, looking at him.

 

‘Watching me sleep? ‘S creepy,” Tony mumbled idly into the pillow; there was no malice in his tone.

 

Steve apparently decided to ignore this wise and highly relevant comment. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Who, me?” Tony considered this for a moment, getting his elbows under him and trying to push himself up, then just gave up and collapsed back down. “Let’s see... Like a piece of shit that’s been frozen and thawed multiple times. Like my limbs are made of aspic. Like my head is full of fucking oatmeal. Also, all the food references are making me sick to my stomach”

 

“So... Do you, er, want a glass of water or something? How do you normally deal with this?”

 

“How I deal with it? Gee, I don’t know, have a drink? Don’t worry, I won’t,” he added, deflating a little. “I’m fine. Antagonistic. But fine.” He turned to lie on his side, and eyed Steve. The man was looking at him with exaggerated patience. “Okay, I’m not _fine_ , but I can manage. I kind of have it under control. I’m not going to run out on you and get drunk instantly, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not that kind of drunk. I’m a drunk of  a better class. I can occasionally wait until the afternoon if I absolutely have to.”

 

He was vaguely aware of Steve’s lips compressing. It was almost like a vibe in the air. An emission of disapproval. _From awake to righteous in 25 seconds_ , Tony thought. _It must be some kind of a record._

 

“I see you don’t appreciate my alcoholism jokes. A pity really. I’ve been working so hard on those. I’d try to think of some others, but the brain-fog is kind of being a debilitating jerk right now.”

 

Was Steve trying to suppress a smile? Oh, yes, there, almost detectable. There was definitely some smile residue on that face.

 

“You’ve no trouble talking, though.”

 

“I’m hungover, not _dead_.” Tony considered for a second, than buried his face back into the pillow and groaned. “Aaargh. Scratch that. I think I _am_ dead.”

 

“I’m also not too appreciative of death humor today,” Steve said, sounding deadpan, but maybe a little too much, so Tony supposed he had just cracked a joke. Tony let him.

 

“Gee, Rogers, you’re leaving me nothing to work with.”

 

It wasn’t that he needed alcohol physically. He could live through a vicious hangover all right. He was in his forties, true, so it was probably going to be a multiple-day hangover with a geometric progression of shittiness until it started to get better. But, hey. It was just what the body was feeling. Who cared about the body.

 

The goddamn _mind_ was the problem. That, and the horrible feeling in his solar plexus, the sensation that wasn’t quite guilt. It had the same outward symptoms as guilt, but when you got to the core of it, it was a keen awareness that you had screwed up your life once and for all, that you were a chronic fuckup, and despite being aware of all the facts, you still kept fucking up. It wasn’t specific. It wasn’t necessarily rational. But that didn’t make it _any less present_ in every cell of your body.

 

Half the time drink made you feel worse, obviously, but half the time it helped unclench your soul, and that was a lottery with a 50/50 chance of oblivion, and taking everything into account, those weren’t such bad odds, after all.

 

Okay, so no oblivion today. He felt too sick to deal with anything, but there you go. That’s what you get from drunk-dialing Steve Rogers, he supposed. He takes you _seriously_.

 

_And then there’s also the embarrassment, but don’t let me start on embarrassment._

 

“Are you pretending you’re asleep?” Steve asked curiously. “Cause your shoulders are clenched and your breathing is all wrong, so I know you’re not sleeping.”

 

_And then there’s he, sitting there, bright like the sun, all Mr-Smith-Goes-To-Washington, with that voice and everything, and why can’t I go to my lab and somehow make all the shit that’s happened **not true**?_

 

Tony left his face buried into the pillow and groaned for a time.

 

He felt a clumsy but gentle hand patting him slowly on the shoulder.

 

_There he goes again_ , he thought. _He thinks that he can tuck you in or pat you on the arm and magically make everything better._

_Okay, maybe he’s making it a little better,_ he wasn’t quite surprised to discover. _But it doesn’t really **help.** _

_An advil for a gangrene._

“It doesn’t work that way”, he said turning his face to Steve again, “in the real world.”

 

“I know. I’m not an idiot.” For a moment, somewhere in the air between them, there hung an unsaid _whatever you may think_. And then Steve said: “Shhh”, but without any real conviction, and patted him once, twice more, then drew his hand back. To Tony, the hand now looked a little lost, resting there on the duvet.

 

He raised an eyebrow, shook his head at himself.

 

“I don’t know what you want,” was all Steve said, and it didn’t sound petulant, just somehow devoid of energy, and Tony wasn’t used to him sounding like that, and he didn’t like it.

 

_I want to invent a time machine, and bring the old you from the past, and then have the old you kick your ass for me_ , he thought. _So much for the real world._

 

“I know you don’t.” He struggled up. Steve reached out to help him, but Tony just shook his head. “I’m a big boy,” he said, almost avoiding that damn wistful undertone that leaked into his voice. “I’m just going to piss. Back in a minute. I need to tell you something, and I need to think of it in the bathroom, because I need to think of a way to say it and... never mind. Just give me two minutes.”

 

“I’m using you,” were the brilliant words he came up with after some bathroom musing. “And I may be a shit, but I’m not a total shit, so I’m not going to do it any more. So please go.”

 

His legs desperately wanted to sit down, but he was determined to stay upright. He had a horrible feeling that, if he sat down, he would just go under, just let Steve do whatever he wanted, feed him cake and sing him to sleep, in all likeliness, and then he would expect Tony to forgive him, and Tony couldn’t. Or not yet, at least. Or ever. Or, at the moment maybe he thought he could, right now, while he was feeling like this, but that was just because he was so tired and so weak, and Steve was so familiar and so... so _there_ , and then there was the shoulder patting and all that. All Tony wanted right now was to sink into bed and be half asleep and just know that Steve was there; just his presence would be enough. But then, Tony knew, he would get a bit better, and the anger would surge back, and that horrible feeling of how everything was forever fucked up, and there will be no making it better with shoulder claps.

 

A hint of that feeling had already crept back, like a tendril, a tentacle tapping you on the shoulder when you dare forget for a moment, and it reminds you: _Oy, you, knees on your_ _stomach, shield on your faceplate, the blackness of the displays, the cold creeping in._

“Your hand is shaking”, Steve said, inconsequentially.

 

Tony looked at it curiously (the one that was not busy holding him to the wall). Shrugged.

 

“You should lie down.”

 

“Steve, did you hear what I just said?”

 

Controlled anger, pulsing of a vein. “Look, Tony, you made it all very clear.” He started counting off on his fingers. “One, I shouldn’t have come. Two it’s not my job to be doing this. Three, there’s nothing I can do anyway. Four, I should go, because, five, you are just using me.” Steve raised both his eyebrows. He seemed less angry now, with a fine lacing of sarcasm that wasn’t really agreeing with him. “Wouldn’t you say I’m duly warned?”

 

“Okay, yeah, but what I meant...”

 

“Shut up and come to bed. You need to eat. You need to sleep. You need to drink water. You need to not think about this right now. I’m staying here because I’m staying here and that’s it.”

 

Tony’s stomach did a little flip. Must have been a bout of sickness, he thought.

 

“But it doesn’t...”

 

“...work that way? Oh, sorry, I forgot. _Six_ , it doesn’t work that way in the real world.”

 

Tony almost smiled. “Hey, that wasn’t half so bad.”

 

“Lie down, you’ll collapse, and when you collapse, I’ll have to pick you up, and then you’ll feel guilty about it.”

 

“So you’re staying?”

 

“I’m staying.”

 

“But we’re probably just going to fight.”

 

“Well, then we fight.”

 

“But,” Tony almost whined, as he crashed onto the bed with relief, “I don’t have the energy to fight!”  


“Well, there you go, then. We don’t fight.”

 

“So what do we do?”

 

Steve thought for a moment. “We order pizza. We watch movies.”

 

In a bout of incredulous almost-energy, Tony sat back up. “Are you fucking _serious_?” As it happens, hunger was suddenly unbearable. _Oh my god, pizza._

 

_Oh my god, he’s staying._

 

“But,” he made a last attempt at unwilling deflection, “we never really did things like that even when we were...” – a certain word would leave too bitter a taste in his mouth – _I was your friend, too_ – “...not always yelling at each other”, he finished lamely.

 

Steve got up. Steve paced to the window and back. Steve threw his hands in the air: “Well, you know what, Stark, we probably should have!”, he yelled.

 

Tony felt an uninvited smile take root on his face.

 

Steve cut it short. “You know what’s incredibly insulting? You think I’m trying to buy your forgiveness or whatever with movies and pizza and bringing you a glass of water.”

 

Earnestness, Tony decided, was probably the best course of action at this point. “I think you think things will go away if we hang out together for a little while and relax and eat pizza.”

 

“Well, they _did_ go away for a moment, not 15 minutes ago,” Steve said, and when Tony opened his mouth to protest, Steve talked right over him: “And they _will_ again _._ For a minute or for two minutes. Or for two hours. Or for however long. So, they’ll come back afterwards. So what? Today you rest. Lie down. Relax. Let it go. So, when you’re feeling a little better, okay,” he went on and gave Tony an indiscernible look, “you can throw me out and tell me you’ll never forgive me, or I’ll storm out saying you were in the wrong all the while and you can go to hell, and okay, it’ll be like that between us then, but at least I will have seen you again and I will have talked to you normally again, at least for a little bit, and by the way you could also say _I’m_ using _you_ while you’re weak, in order to do what _I_ want, well _so what_ , at least I get to _do_ what I want, and that’s to see you.” He finished bitterly and forcibly, and not quite coherently.

 

Between Tony’s ribs, a strange feeling had bloomed, and he couldn’t quite say if it was pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, but it was there, and it was intense, and it was making it a bit hard to breathe.

 

“Oh”, he said in a small voice.

 

****

 

It was a relief to let go, to stop picking at your wound for a moment, let it scab over, although you knew it could go bad underneath; to tell yourself: I can lance this thing tomorrow, and it’ll bleed, and it _should_ bleed so that it doesn’t fester. But for today the scab stays. It makes it hurt a little less. And it’s just one day.

 

Lying on his back, he snuggled into the pillows and smiled a little with his eyes.

 

“Okay, I’ll order then. Friday, order us some food.”

 

Nothing happened.

 

“Oh shit, I turned her off. I forgot that.”

 

“You turned her _off_? Isn’t she your security system too? Is that even safe?”

 

“No. Do you really expect me to go round acting _safe_ when I’m pissed as hell?” He felt a sudden, weird wave of mirth at the idea. “Friday turn yourself back on. Hahahah. It hardly works that way. Hah.“ He was bouncing off the walls with a sudden bout of crazy energy. Steve was sitting in the armchair by the window, looking worriedly at him. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Tony went on laughing for a moment longer then stopped. “There," he said. “I‘m done. All ready for another bout of despair. I should go access the system, turn her back on. She’s never forgiving me for this. Oh god, I can’t deal with this right now.”

 

“So, don’t,” Steve said simply. “I’ll go order some pizza. You probably have like ten pads or phones lying around in your study.”

 

“Yeah, okay... Look, while you’re at it, get me some yoghurt, will you. And tomatoes. You do know how to order online, don’t you? If they don’t taste of plastic, that’s a bonus.”

 

“Jesus, Tony, I’m not an idiot." And then: "Tomatoes, really?”

 

“Potassium.”

 

“Oh, okay. And I need to get changed.” He looked down at his jeans. “I’ve been in this for... too many hours.”

 

“You’ll find some clothes around. There in the next room or somewhere. Vision packed some of my things when we were getting back from the Compound.” A pause. “They are probably still unpacked. And there are some things in the guest rooms. Basically, there’s a fuckton of clothes around...”

 

“ _Tony_.”

 

“Oh, let it go. You wanted to talk to me normally? So, here’s my normal for you.  Fuckton, fuckton, fuckton.”

 

Shaking his head, Steve got up and went out, and Tony was sure he caught the guy hiding a smile, and _I should stop fishing for those_ , but he couldn’t.

 

****

 

Tony did his best to doze of. He lay there, breathing, listening to the muffled sounds of Steve moving through the house, opening and closing doors. If you squint, it was almost nice.

 

_Okay, so I’m here now, and so is he, and he’s giving me these inexplicable warm spells of his attention. I always wanted them, before. The **others** got them, but not me, never me. Me, he’d always kept at an arm’s length. Bickering, yes. Sometimes lovely patches of companionable silence while we were doing things together. Okay, so I always had a tendency to ruin those with bickering, but at least it was good bickering. _

In the past months Tony had been through all this a million times. The usual conclusion was pretty much the same: _Maybe it wasn’t a betrayal of friendship. Maybe we never were friends. I **thought** we were friends, but hey, I was never too good at judging my relationships with people. I probably just got on his nerves. I thought what we had going on was this stormy, rival-ish, intense type of friendship, but maybe he was juts fending me off. _

_But if it were so, he wouldn’t be here, doing this, saying all this. Oh Jesus Christ, I’m disgusting. I have to stop being that 8 year old going around from person to person, asking them: Are you my friend?._

Like a cold wind through his mind: _My visor, my visor, my visor, my chest. Steve’s eyes in that final moment._

 

And his stomach suddenly clenched back. Until then he hadn’t even realized how good relaxed muscles could feel.

 

At least he’d stopped gushing.

 

_I can’t stand these thoughts, too many thoughts, must kill thoughts._

 

Or at least put them in some semblance of order. So he turned to his favorite pastime.

 

~~Why I hate Steve Rogers:~~

(okay, no, not that)

 

Why Steve Rogers is an insufferable fucker: (there, that’s better)

\- because he’s self righteous to a fault

\- because he thinks he’s always right ( _he would tell me I was in the wrong all the while and I can go to hell, really?_ )

\- because he’s conceited

\- because everyone worships him, and he likes it

\- because he knows dick about interpersonal relationships ( _pots, kettles, blackness, but whatever_ )

\- because he can’t or won’t use his words, and thinks he can resolve everything with a pat on the back ( _Okay, so maybe he’s trying a little bit to use his words now_ )

\- because he sees shit in black and white although he’s supposed to have this amazing analytical mind

\- because, judging by last night, he’s angry with me because I’m still angry with him ( _okay, maybe also because I was pissed drunk and attacked him at the door after he flew all the way to here_ )

\- because he kept things from me, _important_ things, things that are killing me, and because he doesn’t trust me; and I really don’t know what I did to deserve that

\- because he kind of tried to kill me

\- because he picked Bucky Barnes over me

\- because he can’t admit he was WRONG; he thinks that deigning to come over here and force-feed me crackers and pizza and pour water over me is a substitute for this

 

Why I like Steve Rogers:

\- because he’s loyal and honest ( _Yeah, hahaha, right. Or, in other words, **not to me**. But perhaps willing to try to be that to me. If I let him. Which I won’t._ )

\- because he obvs cares about me ( _or he wouldn’t be here, right? Right? Jeez, I’m pathetic_ )

\- and he will apparently fly across half the world to see me. At a moment’s notice ( _good thing he tends to hang out with people who own private jets, I suppose_ )

\- because he ARGUES with me. Unlike most of the others, who tend to simply dismiss me as ‘Tony being Tony’, which is just as offensive as saying ‘boys will be boys’ or asking someone in emotional distress ‘are you PMS-ing?’ (note to self: ask Steve ‘are you PMS-ing’ at some point, just to see his face)

\- because he _tries_ to be a good guy. Most people just don’t give a shit

\- because he gives shit about shit  (my vocabulary might improve considerably after I’ve eaten something)

\- because, okay, he can’t admit he was wrong, true, but at least he’s willing to come here and pull me out of the shitter and force-feed me crackers and pizza and pour water over me, like a good bud

\- because apparently... I want to?


	7. Welcome to the Pizza Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is really long. I hope it's not boring. Thank you for all your wonderful reviews and kudos. I write because I _have to_ , I can't _not_ write this story, but your comments and all make me try my best to update as fast as I can :-)

His hands full of DVD’s, Steve came back in looking mildly unhappy, probably at the selection, Tony mused. In the meantime Tony had managed to wash his face and get some water into himself, straight out of the tap. He was standing at the bathroom door now. He almost managed a grin.

 

“I didn’t know I still had DVD’s lying around. Trust Steve Rogers to stay true to decrepit tech.”

 

“What do you mean, decrepit? I only just learned how to use these a year or two back!”

 

“Oh, Steve.”

 

“What? Why are you _oh steveing_ me now?”

 

“From your previous comments I take it you are actually aware of the existence of the internet, right?”

 

“I just managed an express order of yoghurt and your stupid tomatoes,” he informed him, with an edge of secret pride in his voice. “So don’t be condescending?”

 

“Okay, come on, I’ll show you Netflix while we’re waiting for pizza,” Tony grinned. “Hey, I see you’ve found yourself a clean tracksuit bottom, how very unsurprising,” he added brightly. “That’s my favorite, too.”

 

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Actually, this is my old tracksuit, I’ve been looking for it. Didn’t know you stole it.” Offhandedly, he cleared some space on the table by sweeping the garbage to the floor with his elbow. Then he put the DVD’s down, and threw himself into the armchair.

 

“Is not,” Tony said, walking over and half-sitting on the armrest. “That’s my tracksuit, I’ve been wearing it for years.”

 

“I’ve been _looking_ for it for years. Besides, look.” Steve Rogers extended his leg. “It’s not too short. Which means it must be mine.”

 

“That”, Tony said, “makes a horrible kind of sense. I can’t believe you’re stealing my favorite tracksuit _back_ from me.”

 

They both fell silent for a minute, enjoying the pure unimportance of this issue.

 

“Tony?”

 

“Hm.”

 

“Did you put my shield up on _eBay_?”

 

Tony took a deep breath, suppressing a surge of silent laughter. He kept staring at the opposite wall, because seeing Steve’s face right now would just be a sight to set him off. “No?”

 

“It says ‘an excellent replica’ in the description. But it is my shield.” He faltered for a moment. “It’s the shield,” he amended, and Tony felt a mild stab of disappointment for the real world issues spoiling a good joke, but decided to make up for it. He took a better position on the armrest and arched an eyebrow down, at the top of Steve’s head.

 

“Well, maybe someone _thought_ it was a very good replica”, he pointed out.

 

“Where _is_ the shield?”

 

“I... might have thrown it out with the garbage.”

 

“You _didn’t_!”

 

“Sure as hell did.”

 

“Oh my god!”

 

“Someone must have found it.”

 

“But it’s...!” Steve was covering his mouth with his hand, his eyes wide.

 

“Steve.”

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

“It’s in the storage room here”, Tony said slowly and matter-of-factly, as if talking to a small child. “Your shield is in the storage room.”

 

“ _You..._ ”

 

“That just now,” Tony said with a buildup of slow satisfaction, “was for stealing my favorite tracksuit bottom.”

 

Steve was back on his feet, outraged, then he stuffed his hands in his pockets, scowled. “This,” he said, “is _my_ tracksuit bottom. I had it first.”

 

“I had it the longest, and that’s what counts.”

 

“It’s my shield in the picture, though, isn’t it?”

 

“Yep. I uploaded the pic, said it was a replica, wasn’t really going to ever sell it. So, how’s the auction going?”

 

“About $150, I think.”

 

“You bid?”

 

“Tony, that’s... that’s just...”

 

“Mean? Hellyeah.” He considered putting his feet up on the table for a better show of carelessness, but that, he mused, would probably just make him lose his balance, what with the fact he was perched on the armrest and all.

 

And what was the point of balancing there if Steve’s not going to be sitting in the chair? He went over to the bed and slumped on it. Too much exercise.

 

“You,” Steve was saying, studying him in wonder, “put the picture up hoping I would somehow see it, there in Wakanda. Just to goad me, right?”

 

“When I was in one of the pissy moods, a few days ago, yeah. It’s brilliant, isn’t it.”

 

“It’s _childish_.”

  
”No one ever appreciates my genius. Did you see it just now?”

 

“The page was open on your pad.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“So why’s your username _bagelpretzel_?”

 

“That,” Tony said, “will probably remain an eternal mystery. What I would like to know is how you can possibly know about _eBay_ and not Netflix?”

 

****

 

I can’t believe this, Tony thought a while later, watching Steve from a corner of his eye. I can’t believe we’re actually here, stuffing our faces with pizza, watching Star Trek, the _ancient_ Star Trek.

 

The show was utterly unwatchable, but Steve’s face pretty much made up for it, mouth half-open, eyes plastered to the screen, so naively reactive to every silly adventure. _That_ was priceless _._

Tony couldn’t stop casting long, furtive looks at him, laughing on the inside.

 

But then the euphoria slowly subsided, leaving in its wake pleasant drowsiness. The pizza box kicked to the floor, they were sprawled on the bed now, not touching but close, and it wasn’t all good, but the buzzing of angry bees inside his head seemed to have moved to the middle distance.

 

Well, of _course_ he couldn’t just leave it be. You got a sore tooth? The first thing you do when the pain subsides is to poke it with you tongue. How else are you supposed to check if it still hurts, underneath, verify if it’s still as painful as it was yesterday, and the day before, and all the days before that.

 

****

 

 _How come_ , Steve wondered, _that people keep mentioning Star Trek, but no one ever tells you the show is all about friendship?_

 

It was going so well. And then Tony rolled over onto his side, turning his back to Steve, and Steve forgot what was going on onscreen, and the words were suddenly just washing over him, uncomprehended. He turned the thing off. Tentatively, he reached out, then changed his mind and just put his palm down on the bed, very close to Tony’s back, not quite touching him.

 

“A bad spell?” he asked softly, but it seemed wrong at once, because it sounded as if Tony was suffering from something that had nothing to do with Steve, and it was not okay to pretend it was so, although it was easier. When Tony kept saying nothing, Steve reconsidered again and, hesitantly, lay his palm against Tony’s shoulder-blade. Closed his eyes, just for a moment.

 

“Well, _that_ helps,” Tony muttered. Quickly, as if a set of teeth had snapped at him, Steve snatched his hand back.

 

“Hey!” Tony protested in outrage. And then: “Did you think I was being sarcastic? I wasn’t being sarcastic!” A lightning-short brush with happiness for Steve; completely out of order, perhaps, but he didn’t really care. “The hand, please”, Tony prompted. “Steve? C’mon on, bud, you can do it.”

 

_I shouldn’t be smiling when he’s hurting like this, why am I smiling? It’s not okay to smile._

With self assuredness of someone who had been granted permission this time, he lay his palm lightly against Tony’s back and just left it there, both giving and receiving warmth. After a time, he started moving it in small circles.

 

_So, maybe it’s okay to smile a little bit. He can’t see me anyway._

 

This feeling wasn’t so much born out of an explicit need to touch his friend. It was more about being let in, at least a little bit, being allowed to partake in this, and seeing that maybe he could have a little impact, a way to affect his own reality, and Tony’s.

 

“Tony?” he said after a time, when the muscles under his hand had perhaps relaxed a little.

 

“I don’t know,” was Tony’s muffled, incoherent answer.

 

“Do you want to yell at me some more?” Steve asked very meekly.

 

Tony was on his feet in an instant, pacing back and forth. “Please don’t treat me like a child. Please let’s not pretend it’s all about me simply needing to _vent_.”

 

Steve sat up in bed. Lay his palms flat on his knees (clenched fists weren’t exactly helpful when you were trying to actually talk to someone).

 

“I think you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

 

“You’ll have to _say_ things, please don’t expect me to guess,” Tony snapped.

 

“Do you want to _discuss_ , then?”

 

“You’re infuriating. Yes, yes, I guess I do want to discuss.”

 

“So, let’s discuss.”

 

“I’m boiling over and I don’t know where to start. _You_ discuss.”

 

Steve was silent for a moment. “Why the Accords?”

 

Tony stopped, startled. Frowned for a moment. Made as if to laugh out, then didn’t. “I must admit,” he said slowly, “that I didn’t expect you’d actually want to discuss _politics_ of all things, at this point.”

 

“It’s not about politics, I...”

 

“Of course it’s politics!” Tony cut him off.

 

“No, it’s about the fact you wanted to _trick_ us into signing. You hadn’t trusted us in advance to...”

 

Steve wanted to smack himself for retreating into the safe ‘us’ pronoun, but there you go.

 

The incredulous look on Tony’s face was so unexpected, so transformative, that Steve stopped mid word and asked: “What?"

 

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” Tony said, most of the anger gone from his voice, to make way for puzzlement. “I’d been trying to talk to you people about international political situation for _months_. Everyone would just... just... back towards the door and escape from the room as soon as possible! Except for Rhodes, and his views I knew already, and they weren’t overly helpful.”

 

“Oh,” said Steve, a little subdued. But: “That’s...” He scowled, stood up himself. “Pardon me, but that’s _bull._ ”

 

Coldly: “How exactly do you mean?”

 

‘If you’d come to me – let’s leave the others out of it, okay, but if you’d come to _me_ – and told me how all this concerned us, you know I would have listened.”

 

“Oh, stop kidding yourself, Rogers, you’d just have shut it all out because, and I quote, ‘politicians are evil’. I had to prep the terrain somehow.”

 

“Prep the _terrain_?” Steve was aware his own voice was raising dangerously in temperature.

 

“Yes, yes, prep the terrain, for fuck’s sake. I’d been trying for months – the whole shitstorm had been _brewing_ for months. You didn’t seem to be getting any more receptive, and it was getting urgent. Are we _really_ talking politics after all that’s happened?”

 

“So you went and did what you considered best? For all of us?”

 

“Yes, _obviously_.” Tony stopped for a moment. “It’s not as if I _wanted_ to... to... _rob_ you of the right to decide, shit, I don’t get kicks out of that. What must you think of me. It’s just that somebody had to _do_ something!”

 

“And if you’d come to me, you are saying I would just have refused to bend my principles, right?”

 

Tony’s mouth seemed to twitch involuntarily into a weird, angry half-smirk. “Principles.” That was all he said.

 

“Yes, _principles_...”

 

“Someone should perhaps explain to you that making a compromise is not the same as _being_ _compromised_.”

 

“But you wouldn’t tell me that because you thought I wouldn’t listen, right?”

 

“I thought you’d just shut me out, yeah.”

 

“What you are saying, then”, Steve said slowly, “is that you didn’t tell me because _you were afraid of my reaction_?” Another, wiser part of Steve hated the note of almost-triumph that had crept into his voice.

 

Tony smiled a small, furious smile. “Oh, oh, I’ll give you that one. _Subtly_ done. I walked right into it, didn’t I?”

 

Which was, Steve felt, an unfair and underhanded stab on Tony's part. Because that was not what Steve was doing, and Tony knew it, or he should have known it, _or was it exactly what I was doing_?

 

“So, you mistrusted me first”, said Steve stubbornly, because he felt the way back had just been vaporized.

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

“You blame me for not trusting you, but you mistrusted me first.”

 

Tony seemed lost for words, probably for the first time in his entire life. The anger was simmering behind his eyes, and it threatened to boil over.

 

“How long exactly...” Tony began, stopped, swallowed. Didn’t finish.

 

Steve knew where this was going, though, and suddenly he was in deep water, and he couldn’t feel the bottom under his feet, and the current was getting stronger. “Okay”, he said, raising his hands palms up. _Gone too far_ , a small voice kept whispering in the back of his head. _Way way way too far._ “Okay, so I mistrusted your reactions first, I’ll give you that. Before anything of this happened, I didn’t tell you... what I didn’t tell you. I admit that. But you didn’t know that back then. So, as far as you knew, you mistrusted me first. As far as you knew, you _betrayed_ me _first_.”

 

Open-mouthed, Tony just stared at him for a moment. And then, a roar:

 _“It’s not the same!!!_ ”

 

What followed was silence. The dust slowly settled. Somewhere in the outside world, birds probably lighted back onto the trees, feathers still slightly ruffled. Time ticked on.

 

Tony was staring somewhere towards the windows. Steve was intensely studying an unidentified spot somewhere in the vicinity of Tony’s knees.

 

“You know,” Tony said at some point, feigning disinterest, “when I see my father next – which will be in hell – I’ll ask him to make you a serum of enhanced maturity and emotional intelligence.”

 

Steve nodded, still not looking at him. “That might be useful,” he admitted softly.

 

****

Steve stole a glance at Tony's face, and Tony saw, saw him hastily look away. All Tony was able to do right then was to just stand there, slowly shaking his head. Than he sighed deeply.

 

“Steve?”

 

“Hm?” Steve said miserably.

 

“Do you _understand_ why it’s not the same? To me? Can you see why for me it’s very very different?”

 

“I understand,” Steve began “For you, one is personal, and the other is ‘just politics’. Okay. So. You can compartmentalize. I can’t. Not when the person that I... that the person that... that you...”

 

Tony was aware he was furiously tapping his fingers on his thigh in a crazy _staccato_. For quite some time, that and the low, soothing song of electrical appliances were the only sounds in the whole house.

 

Then Steve looked at him, his face all vulnerable, and Tony had this urge to smack him, or at least shake him.

 

“Sometimes,” Steve began, stopped, choked. This small sound  dampened the smacking urges in Tony. Steve started again, slower: “Sometimes I want to go bash my head against that wall over there until it splits open so I can show you what’s inside. I don’t know how to _say_ these things.”

 

“Oh wow, Rogers, I think you just discovered that communication isn’t always easy.  Sheesh, congratulations.” Tony’s tone wasn’t exactly vicious. Or so he hoped. Probably more exhausted than vicious at this point, he reflected.

 

“See,” Steve pointed a finger at him. He let his hand fall wearily down by his side, looked away. “That’s because you keep doing that. Whenever I try to think of something to say, in my mind I hear what you might retort to that, and then I... don’t say anything. If I say I’m sorry, you’ll just go ‘so what do I care that you are sorry? How does that change anything you did?’. If I say ‘I should have told you about Bucky and your parents’, you’ll just say ‘Gee, Rogers, really? Now that you have it all figured out, why don’t you _go back to the past and change it’_.”

 

Tony kept very, very silent. And, in the midst of the whirlwind of thoughts, a small but stubborn one was firmly taking shape, and it wasn’t a thought he was at all expecting to make an appearance at this time. _You talk to me in your head. You talk to **me**? In your **head**?_ _Twenty four hours ago I thought you didn’t give two shits about me and you talk to me in your head. I talk to **you** in **my** head._ _Why can’t I think of a different way to say it than a sardonic: ‘Gee, Rogers, I didn’t know you **cared**.’_

 

All around this thought, rows of other possible retorts were mustering.

 

“Tony? Why aren’t you saying anything? You’re making me uncomfortable.”

 

“Because,” Tony said, and tried out a tiny grin, just to see how it would fit, “I’m trying to be amusing and quippy, but all the comments I can think of are eviscerating. Oh, okay, here's one that's not so bad: I sound like that in your head? I’m much funnier in person. And way, way more charming.” And then, like an order of revelation with guilt on the side: _I never knew my stupid ass comments had that much effect on him._ “In any case,” Tony went on, “we will forego all head-smashing today, please. I’d rather you didn’t paint my walls with your gray matter.” And then, grudgingly allowing: “The head stays. I like that head exactly where it is, thank you very much.” _See, I give way just a little, and he smiles at me like that. Almost not there, but there, that smile. Why do I care if he smiles? Why does it make me want to say more not-horrible things to him, so that he’d smile?_

 

****

Steve was silent. He figured that, if he wanted this to ever go anywhere, he’d have to squeeze all the painful words into the open and let them breathe for a little while. Then, very mildly: “Look, I _know_ me not telling you about your parents’ murder cannot be compared with you not telling me about the Accords.” Then, with more intensity: “I really _do_ know.”

 

Tony just nodded, once.

 

Steve felt all spent. He walked the two, three steps to the armchair, changed his mind, and sunk to the floor beside it, leaning his head back against the wall. The carpet under him was soft and fluffy, and Steve had an impression he somehow didn’t really deserve it. Half-hoping Tony wouldn’t notice, he patted the empty spot next to himself, invitingly.

 

Tony walked over and slid down the wall to sit beside him.

 

“I hurt you horribly, back there in that base," Steve said. "And I don’t mean physically.”

 

“Twice in like ten minutes,” Tony replied, but there was not much passion in his voice. “And that after I just went back on my word and disregarded the fucking Accords. For you.” Then, as an afterthought: “You fuck.”

 

“I hated that you found out that way. About your parents. Myself.”

 

“Yourself what?”

 

“Myself. Hated myself.”

 

“ _That_ , selfishly, makes me feel a bit better. And now?”

 

“Still hate myself.”

 

“Okay, even better. Seems like we are getting somewhere.” Steve didn’t turn his head, but he thought he detected a nascent grin in Tony’s voice. “Go ahead, tell me some more about how much you hate yourself.”

 

Gently: “Tony. Don’t be an ass.”

 

They just sat there for a time, on the floor, leaning against the wall, shoulders touching, like a small brazier, a tiny spot of warmth in all of Siberia. The silence was almost comfortable.

 

“Tony, I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry...”

 

“Please don’t apologize to me. It means nothing to me.”

 

“But that’s how I feel!”

 

“It’s just the words everyone says when they screw up and want forgiveness.”

 

All of a sudden, Steve had this impression he was being deliberately tormented right now, and he didn’t like it. On multiple occasions Tony had admitted he _knew_   Steve meant what he said. And then this. Want honesty, Stark? Really? “Okay, so how about this: I _hated_ you back there. I hated you for being in such pain. I hated seeing you in pain. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand being the cause of that much pain... so I just... I _hated_ you for it, and for making me deal with it, and for making me chose. I hated myself too, by the way, but that was different, because it never went away.” Too much heat in his words, he knew, but it was almost as if he was listening to his own voice ramble on in the distance, with no power to stop it. _Okay, so now I’ve screwed everything_ _up_ _once and for all_ , he thought, coldly, analytically, but that thought seemed to come from far away too.

 

“That,” Tony said slowly, pondering, “makes a certain dysfunctional kind of sense. You know? I can see that. I can see where you are coming from with that.”

 

“Say what?”

 

“I said that finally you are talking sense.”

 

“How can you prefer something... something this _horrible_ to an apology?”

 

“Gee, Rogers, what do I like better, empty platitudes or real emotions? Hmm, let me think for a moment there. No... no... I can’t be sure.”

 

“Could you... maybe not call me ‘Rogers’ right now?” Steve said I a strangled voice. “It’s killing me.”

 

Tony turned his head and gave him a curious, appreciative look. “Yeah,” he said wonderingly. “Yeah, I can do that.”

 

“Tony...” The words were coming on their own, again, like a flash-flood, “I wouldn’t have killed you. I went too far, but I wouldn’t have killed you. I was a shit to you - but I wouldn’t have killed you. I wouldn’t have. I _wouldn’t_.”

 

“Okay,” Tony whispered, and closed his eyes just for a second, and it seemed to Steve he was basking in these words, and this made Steve feel very, very small. Then Tony’s expression returned to normal, on the usual verge of snarkiness.

 

“Since we are having a heart-to-heart and all,” he said, and his irony, weirdly, seemed to be directed at himself ( _or maybe I’m just learning to discern between these,_ Steve thought). “You know that maturity serum I cracked a joke about, the one you didn’t laugh at?”

 

“It was a pretty good joke, though, I thought”, Steve said dryly. “Very cutting.”

 

With some satisfaction: “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well, I may need an infusion of the said serum myself. Because, see, in all this jumble of mistrust and the ways... we both screwed up... and betrayed each other... and who attacked whom and who tried to kill whom...You know what stings so much I want to scream? That you went and chose your friend Barnes over me without a second thought.”

 

“What?” Steve was a little taken aback. “But what was I supposed to do? Let you kill him? You said you saw it now. Last night. You said you know he was innocent.”

 

“Yes, but that’s not the point, the point is how you chose _him_. I want you to have chosen _me_. What’s so difficult to grasp?”

 

“But that’s... You cannot _possibly_ be jealous of Bucky!”

 

“What? Yes I can!”

 

“But... but... Tony, for God’s sake, it’s not a _competition_ about whom I...”

 

“What do you mean, it’s not a competition”, Tony snapped. “Of _course_ it’s a competition. _Everything’s_ a competition. And I want to _crush him_ for daring compete with me.” Back to furious, Steve thought. Just like that. Just at the _thought_ of poor Bucky.

 

“Oh, come on, Tony, you can’t mean it. You’re better than this!”

 

“No, I’m _not_. Besides, I honestly don’t need you telling me I’m not good enough. Because, see, I already have _two_ people in my head, telling me that every minute of every day, and they are _both_ guys named Stark.”

 

“That’s... so not what I meant.”

 

“Probably not.”

 

“Tony... “

 

“I accept your dysfunctionalities, you accept mine, that's the deal, that’s how it goes! Can’t have it work just one way, Rogers. Oh, hell... _Steve_. ”

 

Steve looked at him, and all of a sudden Tony seemed so tired again, so tormented, and he thought of what he had been doing to himself, these past months, and how he probably didn’t need Steve to tell him he should try and be better, because Steve was always telling that to himself, and no matter how much he tried, it never seemed to work. “You,” he said slowly, “are one of the best... or maybe the best... person I know. Morally speaking. Okay?”

 

Bubbling laughter escaped from Tony’s mouth. The jerk actually went and laughed out. His eyes were bitter, though.

 

“It’s not empty words!” Steve insisted, outraged. “I wouldn’t just say it! Why do you keep doing this to me? I _mean_ what I say.”

 

“No, I know you do,” Tony said, trying to calm down, but still shaking a little. “It’s just that your judgment is not particularly well-known for being impartial. But thank you. I guess.”

 

Steve paused. Then: “The nuke,” was all he said. Very seriously.

 

“Yeah, okay, the nuke”, Tony admitted grudgingly. “That was pretty flashy, wasn’t it?”

 

“That suit”, Steve continued slowly, “was not designed to keep a man alive in outer space.”

 

“ _Thank_ you for remembering that, everyone jut seems to remember my screwups of late.” Tony grinned his bright, dismissive grin, _which_ , Steve mused, _probably means my_ words _are actually getting to him._ And: _Good._

 

“That’s not a mission a man expects to come back from. And you just... just hugged that nuke and flew off.”

 

“Gee, you’re making me all warm and tingly inside, just _thinking_ of myself. Please stop before I have to go jerk off.”

 

“ _Tony!_ ”

 

Tony seemed indescribably happy at the scandalized look on Steve’s face.

 

“So,” Steve began again in measured tones, “what I think is, you probably wouldn’t have killed Bucky, in the end. I think you might have...”

 

Tony arched an eyebrow. “What, back there? Oh, I would have killed him. Don’t you ever doubt it. Buh-bye, Bucky Baby.”

 

“He’s back in cryo. Did you know he was back in cryo?”

 

“Don’t you talk to me about Bucky Barnes,” Tony snapped. A beat. “He’s in cryo?” He frowned. ”Really?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Steve was afraid an acerbic comment would be coming next, whatever thought might _really_ be brewing there, behind Tony’s eyes. And Steve just couldn’t stand to hear one right now, so he hurriedly added: “He figured he was too dangerous. To everyone. He couldn’t handle not having control over his actions.”

 

Tony was nodding thoughtfully. “That’s... understandable, yes.”

 

****

 

 _It’s these silences that I’ve always liked with us_ , Tony thought. _I wonder if he’s aware of that._ He didn’t want to think about Barnes right now – he _couldn’t_ – nor about all the implications, so he just let his mind drift for a time.

 

“Tony?” Very tentatively, almost shyly.

 

“What?”

 

“I think you must hate having lost control like that. In the base. That’s one of the main problems, and you are not even mentioning it, isn’t it? That you can’t accept the fact _you_ can just completely _lose control_. Right?”

 

Tony glanced at Steve’s face, surprised at this unexpected moment of insight. And he could have said _everyone would have lost control_ _at seeing their fucking parents killed right in front of their eyes;_ and he could have said _do you really think I bloody care;_ and he could have said _don't ever presume to know what I'm thinking, Rogers_. All of these statements would have been true, in a way. But sometimes we see multiple options laid in front of us, like graphs, and we can see the consequences of every word, stretching ahead, into the future. And sometimes we let the dominant emotion win nevertheless, or go for the option that is most likely to hurt someone, just because they’d hurt us, or we opt to simply raise our shield and cover our vulnerabilities. But sometimes – sometimes we recognize a point of divergence, a small and unobtrusive one, but still crucial, and sometimes we pick the truth that runs deepest, and to hell with vulnerability. “Yeah”, he admitted, quietly. “Yeah, I really really hate losing control." Which was the understatement of the century, of course.

 

“If I’d told you about your parents, it wouldn’t have happened.”

 

“No, it wouldn’t have.”

 

“I lost control too, you know...”

 

“I know.”

 

“I’m not really sorry I beat you up, though.”

 

“Oh?” Tony commented dryly. “How marvelous, dear.”

 

“I mean, I’m sorry I hit you like that, but I don’t see what choice I had there. Because I couldn’t have just let you...”

 

“Yeah, I thought we were over that.”

 

A pause. Then Steve said: “Know what makes me want to go break all my fingers, though?”

 

Tony looked over. Steve’s hand lay on the man’s thigh, not moving, somehow managing to look forlorn. Tony liked that hand.

 

“Please don’t break the fingers. What is it?”

 

“I left you there.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“In Siberia.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It’s _Siberia_.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It was cold. I broke your suit. You were hurt. And I just left you there.”

 

All Tony was capable of was silence.

 

Steve paused, as if sorting trough his thoughts, then, with so much pain that Tony’s middle constricted in sympathy: “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how much, Tony.”

 

 _I don’t know how to forgive_ , Tony thought. _I do not comprehend the process itself. Deciding someone is a fucker and you don’t want them in your life, yeah, I can see that. And then you genuinely stop caring. Which is what I have unsuccessfully been striving for these past months. Or, I can understand how you sometimes overreact, and get angry, but then time goes by, and you realize things actually got blown out of proportion. And you sort it out with your friend. But if that’s not the case, what then? How do you let go if it really **was** bad?_

 

Tony hadn’t been aware of standing up, but he now noticed he was on his feet, pacing back and forth, gesturing with his hands in silence.

 

Steve was gazing up at him. “What are you thinking now?” he asked.

 

“That I still don’t know how to make that be _enough_!”, Tony snapped. “Even if I want to.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was this to repetitive? I really tried to make it not boring, and still at least touch most of the subjects that would be discussed here...


	8. Platonic, with a Chance of Erections

 

Tony had stormed off into the bathroom to take a shower. Steve didn’t like the quiet that had settled over the world. Perhaps even yelling was better.

 

_As soon as I think we’re getting somewhere, it’s like we revert all the way back to step one._

 

_Okay, so maybe not to the step one, exactly. Maybe it’s like a spiral, and we go in circles, and every time we arrive to the same spot, but maybe a little bit higher. As long as we’re not going downwards, I can hope it can still be okay._

 

Tony had a temper of a nuclear weapon, though, a one being operated by an entity incomprehensible to Steve. Steve didn’t know what was going to set him off or in what way he was going to react, or what will the all-encompassing consequences of that be, for the world around them both. Steve had no idea what to do with him.

 

_Well_ , he mused, sprawled on the carpet, hands behind his head as he was studying the ceiling, _there’s actually this one way of dealing with a live nuke..._

 

_You hug it tightly to your chest._

_You fly off into the unknown._

_You hope for the best._

 

After a time, he opened the bathroom door quietly. It wasn’t locked, he noted. A whole cloud of steam rushed out.

 

Although Tony must have heard the door, he didn’t turn around. Wrapped in two towels – one around his waist, the other, a huge one, draped all the way around his shoulders and back, he was shaving. Evidently, he didn’t need to look in the mirror in order to do it, since the said mirror was completely clouded over.

 

Steve just watched him for a moment. He waited until Tony was done with the finishing touches, until he put the razor down. Then, in two big strides, Steve was behind him. He put his arms all around Tony’s shoulders, rested his cheekbone against Tony’s head, against his wet hair. He was feeling Tony’s back – albeit through the stupid towel – against his chest and stomach, warm all the way down; like hugging a mug of scalding hot cocoa. Steve held him tightly, tightly. He closed his eyes for a moment and just was.

 

****

 

Tony did hear the door. He was figuring out what exactly to do with the fact, when he found himself wrapped not only in his soft towel, but in a big, tight, unrelenting hug.

 

There was a moment of resentment for his space being violated, and Tony tried to hold onto it, but it was quickly dissolving, like mist in the face of sunlight. Steve was clinging to him as if to life and _how can I stay resentful when you hug me like that, it’s been ages since anyone’s hugged me like that._ A forehead, resting against the back of Tony’s head. A fountain of life and warmth against his neck and back. Steve was like a bumper, Tony mused. Kept everything at bay when he was there. _Must be those arms._

 

Sometimes it’s not so bad, having your space violated.

 

Tony allowed himself to lean into him, just a bit, just a hint, and he let a sliver of tension escape from his shoulders into ether.

 

_It shouldn’t work that way_ , he reminded himself, but for a second he let it, and it did.

 

Awkwardly – since his arms were functionally pinned to his sides above the elbows – he raised his hand, patted the fingers that were resting on his breastbone. He covered Steve’s hand with his, and it was as if something in him, something that had been clenched for a long while, finally relaxed.

 

Of course he couldn’t let it last.

 

“Steve?” he said very gently.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Steve, you have to let me go.”

 

“Uh-uh,” Steve muttered into his hair. There was a steely note of stubbornness in his voice. Tony knew that stubbornness well; it was an old friend.

 

“But you’ll have to,” Tony pointed out mildly, “at some point.” He wasn’t exactly making an effort to free himself, though.

 

“Never,” was the muffled reply from somewhere around his ear.

 

“But,” he began, then tried to carefully rephrase what he was going to say.

 

“Not everything’s resolved?” Steve said. “But I know. I was _there_. So, can’t we have this, then? Just this? Just for a little while, without taking anything else into account.” He hugged him even tighter. “C’mon, Tony, you can do it. Relax into it. _Try._ ”

 

Tony closed his eyes, let his hand fall. Then he leaned further back into the warmth, feeling how well they fit together, just how good it was to be held and touched, just a bit, just for a little while.

 

“Tony?” Steve’s voice was suddenly more self-conscious; Tony could almost _hear_ the blush rise into his face. “I don’t mean anything by this, I just wanted to hug you.”

 

“Yeah, uh-huh,” murmured Tony soothingly, not opening his eyes. _I’m melting like ice-cream_ , he thought. _Isn’t this pathetic? Because he’s there and he cares and he’s clinging to me like a puppy._ Oh yeah, it was pathetic all right. But so was, Tony had to admit, drinking yourself into stupor day after day because you thought he _didn’t_ care _. So, if I’m going to be pathetic_ , he thought, _maybe it’s not a bad idea to sometimes go with the pathetic that actually makes me feel good._

 

A slight movement and redistribution of weight. Steve peered over Tony’s shoulder, then ran his finger further along Tony’s breastbone, an inch or two down his ribcage.

 

_Yeah, I don’t mean anything by this, nuh-uh, not me,_ Tony thought dryly, but he was fighting a smile, and he knew it.

 

What Steve murmured, however, was: “Oh, your poor ribs. I broke some, didn’t I?”

 

Some, yeah. A few. The bruises had lasted for a longest time. Tony had grown quite emotionally attached to those bruises towards the end (and then they had, of course, disappeared).

 

“Screw your guilt trips,” he said, but not at all ungently. “If we go there now, who knows if we’ll ever find a way out.” The fact, Tony mused, that I’m having warm fuzzies because he’s feeling bad probably makes me an awful person.

 

“I’m just going to hold you until you stop hurting,” Steve said by his ear.

 

Tony opened his eyes. The mirror had cleared, and he stole a look at Steve’s face, or the part of it that wasn’t buried in Tony’s hair. Steve’s visible eye was also open. Very earnestly, he was gazing at Tony’s reflection in the looking glass.

 

“I know,” the man said seriously just as Tony opened his mouth to speak. “You are still angry, I know you are, I know it’s not going away so easily. But what I meant is... maybe I can at least make it... make the anger _hurt_ a bit less, though. Hm?”

 

“There is”, Tony reflected aloud, “a certain possibility it might work.” And first one corner of his mouth twitched upwards, and then the other.

 

Then, as if on cue, he felt a stirring against the small of his back.

 

Still smiling, Tony asked: “Steve?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Are you having an erection?”

 

In a very small voice: “...yes...?”

 

“It’s not a spontaneous, I assume?”

 

“No!” replied Steve, swiftly and indignantly. And then: “Yes? I don’t know? What exactly do you mean by ‘spontaneous’?”

 

Laughing on the inside, Tony said: “It’s when you have it for no reason. When you are... not really aroused. Something with the hormones or blood flow. You _must_ have had them as a teen, everyone does. Usually at funerals and such, when it’s most embarrassing.”

 

“Oh. That.”

 

Tony studied the other man in the mirror.

 

Steve looked deeply uncomfortable. “Then I don’t really think it’s a spontaneous,” he managed eventually.

 

“Yeah, I didn’t think so either,” Tony laughed. Then: “Steve...? If you don’t release your grip a little bit, I can’t turn around.”

 

“ _Nonono_ , don’t turn around!”

 

“Ooooh, like that, is it?”

 

 “No, I mean... you’re _naked_.”

 

“The problem being...?” Tony said dryly, but he knew there was nothing really sarcastic about his grin. It felt _so_ good to be wanted. And if a person – if _Steve_ – wanted you after finding you covered in your own vomit and after you spent an afternoon yelling at each other, battering each other with guilt, then, Tony supposed, he _really_ wanted you.

 

Steve was just standing there, clutching him to his chest as if he had no intentions of ever letting go.  He was red as a summer sunset. (Tony liked both summer and sunsets.)

 

“What is it, you a virgin or something?” Tony asked with a teeny edge of a gleeful viciousness.

  
  
”No”, the man replied quickly. “Why do people keep asking me that?”

 

“You can tell me,” Tony went on in the same tone. “I wouldn’t tease you. Much. Just when we’re alone. Or with close friends.”

 

These last 4 words: they were like happily swallowing an unexpected knife-blade, all in one gulp, all in good fun. Tony hadn’t planned to say that. Or, more accurately, for a moment there he had stupidly forgotten all the implications, and who he was referring to, and that he didn’t have any close friends, not any more – well, except for Rhodey, of course, who wasn’t exactly a friend to Steve right now. Thinking about all of them brought back a shitload of hurt he was fighting so hard to escape from.

 

He wondered if Steve had noticed the glitch. He decided to gloss over it, because not glossing over it would mean an onslaught of more emotions – emotions of the wrong _kind_ – and he couldn’t deal with that right now.

 

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” Steve blurted. “Please don’t be mad.”

 

_Well, that settles that, then_ , Tony thought, and what he felt was a mixture of disappointment and relief, and he wondered which of the two would prove stronger in the end.

 

“How could I be mad at you for that?” he asked with just a trickle of sadness, and smiled into the mirror, but maybe it actually resembled a tiny spasm around the lips and not exactly a smile, he thought.

 

“I mean, not right now,” Steve went on, relaxing his grip on Tony’s torso for the first time since this weird bout of bathroom bonding had started. Tony wondered if he should use this chance to get free. Decided against it – for a little while longer, at least. Until it came close to obvious he was _not_ doing it, he supposed. “It would complicate everything further, and things are too complicated already,” Steve went on.

 

“That’s probably prudent”, Tony said calmly.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

A cheerless agreement, if there ever was one. Half spontaneously and half with a willing effort, they disentangled from each other. It was all balancing on the edge of becoming painfully uncomfortable, what with them avoiding each other’s eyes and all. Then Tony bit the bullet and lay his palm on Steve’s upper arm, tucked it a little under his short sleeve. He just left it there, like a statement. With a sudden smile, Steve looked him in the face – okay, not in the eyes, maybe, but somewhere around his nose, which wasn’t so bad, all things considered.

 

“I need to wash this shit off,” Tony pronounced, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the mirror. The remainders of the shaving cream, now drying on his face, were getting seriously itchy.

 

“Tony... could I ask you something?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Do you... do you want me?”

 

_Throwing reason to the wind after all, are we?_ Tony thought. And: _Apparently disappointment had been stronger than relief if I’m smiling like this_.

 

Tony transformed his expression into his sharp grin. “Want to come and see for yourself?”, he said and waved at his betoweled groin.

 

Steve’s blushing was nothing new, but apparently it could get even more intense. His eyes were sealed to Tony’s chin and resolutely refused to look any lower.

 

Tony took pity on him. “Yes”, he said very matter-of-factly. “I do.”

 

“Oh. Okay then.” Steve turned to go.

 

“Wait, what, that’s _it_?”

 

“Well, I needed to know.”

 

_Fair enough, I guess,_ Tony conceded. The smile refused to leave the room.

 

****

 

“Did I mess it up?” was the first thing Steve blurted as soon as Tony was out, dressed in clean pajamas he’d discovered with other things Vision had brought from the Compound. “Did I scare you off?”

 

“ _I’m_ not the blushing milkmaid in this tandem,” Tony grinned, but as his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness of the bedroom after the bright lights of the bathroom, he noticed tension around Steve’s eyes and a slight frown that hadn’t been there two minutes ago.

 

Steve was sprawled on the bed, half turned on his side, an arm under his cheek, hair falling into his eyes. He was looking, Tony thought, distinctly miserable for some reason. “I don’t even know what I’m doing,” he said, not looking at Tony.

 

Tony came over, sat down on the edge of the bed. “Hey,” he said gently.

 

“Hey.” Eyes still fixed at the wall.

 

“I think,” Tony said, “you are doing what feels good at the moment and that’s it.”

 

“Sorry,” muttered Steve.

 

“Stop it.”

 

“Oh. Okay.”

 

“Everything’s fine. Nothing happened.”

 

“Yeah”, Steve commented with noticeable sadness. That sadness was somehow soothing to Tony. And then: “It’s just too early, and everything’s too messed up, and...”

 

“Hey,” Tony said again, sharper this time, firmer. “Whatever you’re comfortable with is okay. Okay?”

 

A pause. Steve was studying him, wanting and _not_ wanting to say something. “I just never know what you’re going to do next. “

 

Tony suppressed the urge to touch his cheek, his hair, and settled with a palm against Steve’s biceps, which seemed to be a now established, secure territory. “I mean”, Steve went on. “If we... I keep imagining _afterwards_ , and what if you’re unable to look at me then, and you just say ‘this doesn’t change anything’... “

 

Tony wanted to say ‘I wouldn’t say that’, but he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t be _thinking_ it, so he kept silent. He wanted to say ‘aren’t you the one who wanted to forget everything and live in the moment?’, but it seemed cruel, to hurl his words back at him like that. Tony was done with that, at least for today. So he kept silent. He wanted to be back in that bathroom (why did so many good things have to happen in the bathroom?), wrapped in that towel, and in that hug. And just... just be silent. But keeping silent was cruel too, he realized as he watched Steve study him back, so intently, searching, searching for something in Tony’s face. So Tony blurted what was going through his mind at that very moment: “Want me to spoon you?”

 

And the shock and the smile, the widening of Steve’s eyes, were just the right reward, and “Oh, _yes_ ,” he said so very quickly in response to Tony’s question.

 

Awash in relief, Tony scrambled over Steve’s legs, then lowered himself onto the bed behind him, and snuggled close, so close. His left arm went under Steve’s cheek (holding his breath, Steve raised his head to let him put it there). His right arm around Steve’s shoulder, his torso. Fitted tightly together, stomach against back, all the way down to the thighs and knees (his knee resting on Steve’s left leg, Steve’s right bent a bit forward. Result: instant coziness.

 

“I don’t know what I’m doing either”, Tony whispered into Steve’s hair, because whispering was easier, it was almost like you didn’t really say anything at all.. “But, you know, I think people generally don’t. You just scramble around and... mostly you fuck up, but sometimes it’s right, and you can never know in advance. All battle plans fall apart during the first five minutes of the battle.”

 

“I know”, Steve whispered back.

 

Then they fell silent, but it was a silence filled with breathing and warmth and touch, and it was better than good.

 

Then: “I can go check into a rehab,” Tony whispered, a bit grudgingly. “If it’s the drinking you’re worried about.”

 

“It’s _you_ I’m worried about.”

 

“But you think I should do it, don’t you?”

 

“You’ll do what you want”, Steve replied quietly, mildly irritated. But Tony thought he detected fondness there too, and _yes, definitely fondness_ , he reflected as Steve reached out and caught Tony’s hand that was resting on his stomach, and their fingers intertwined. “You always do what you want, Tony.”

 

“Well, so do you,” Tony shot back, but it tends to be a bit less sharp when you whisper it  against the back of someone’s head.

 

“Yeah, I guess.”

 

“We’ll figure it all out,” Tony murmured.

 

”You think?”

 

“Honestly? I’ve no idea. But ‘no idea’ is way more hopeful than what I was thinking yesterday.”

 

“Yeah, me too,” Steve said and squeezed Tony’s hand, and snuggled back into him some more, although everyone involved realized it was quite impossible to get any closer without actually getting naked.

 

_If someone could kindly explain to me how unresolved sexual tension is the healthier option here, I’d be eternally grateful_ , Tony thought dryly, but it was just one of the thoughts coursing through his head, and his heart wasn’t in it at all. Pushing down a wave of tenderness, he dropped a tiny kiss on Steve’s shoulder, then settled down and closed his eyes. Yes, they were going to fight on and on and on, he figured, and the anger was going to come back time and time again, and they will probably never agree about a million issues. But as long as Steve was still willing to be there afterwards, Tony could maybe deal with that, he thought.

 

_After all_ , he reflected as he was dozing off with a smile, _the best we can hope from life is a tiny amount of almost-happiness in between two disasters._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That's it, that's all. An open ending, but kind of a hopeful one. I really hope you guys like it. Don't forget to tell me what you thought. Lots of love <3 <3 <3


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